the foreigner who has once saved
them is going--going away because he has been ordered to. All night
long there was an awful panic among these people which made one's
heart sick, for they understood better than us how quickly they would
be massacred once they left our care.

I shall never forget the night of the 19th of June, 1900, with all its
tragedy and tragi-comedy, though I live to be a hundred. It allowed me
to see something of real human nature in momentary flashes; of how
mean and full of fear we really are, how small and how easily
impressed. A hundred times I longed to have the time and the power to
set down exactly so that everyone might understand the incidents and
the sudden impulses which took place--all prompted by that master of
human beings--FEAR. That is why we worship heroes, or we pretend we
worship them, because it is the _culte_. For a moment these people who
have been set on pedestals were not afraid. Is it only the power not
to be afraid which makes one a hero?

XV

THE DEBACLE BEGINS

20th June, 1900.

* * * * *

It is notorious that in moments of tension, when the mind has been
stimulated to too great an activity by unhealthy excitement, you think
of the most curiously assorted things--in fact, of absurd things which
are quite out of place. I have been thinking the whole time of
something very stupid which is only fiction: That a Zulu, named
Umslopagas, rode and ran one hundred miles in a single night and then
refreshed himself sufficiently by a couple of hours' sleep to deliver
battle with such vigour at the head of a marble staircase, that he
saved the haggard hero. That is what I have been thinking of....

We of Peking are, unfortunately, not of the mettle of Zulus, and as
far as I am personally concerned, three hours' sleep is but the
appetite-giver for five hours more. And so on this fateful 20th June,
with the time limit of our ultimatum expiring at four o'clock, I got
up in no sort of valorous spirit, and with the feeling that tragedies
outside the theatre--at least those that spin themselves out for an
indefinite number of days--are quite impossible for us Moderns. But,
then, probably everybody has always thought the same thing--even those
who lived before the Renaissance.

At eight o'clock everyone was once more afoot, although most have
hardly had a wink of sleep. All over our Legation quarter, dusty and
dirty men, unwashed and unbath