stones in order to maim and hurt our
outposts without firing. All the outer barricades and trenches are
being hurriedly roofed in to protect us from this new danger. One of
our men, struck on the head with a twenty-pound stone, has been
unconscious ever since, and a great many many others are badly hurt in
other ways. The Chinese can be very ingenious devils if they wish, and
the score against them is piling up more and more.

XXVI

MORE MESSENGERS

10th August, 1900.

* * * * *

At last some great news! Messengers from the relief columns have
actually arrived, and the columns themselves are only a few days'
march from Peking. What excitement there has been among the
non-combatant community; what handshaking; what embracing; what
fervent delight! This unique life is to end; we are to become
reasonably clean and quite ordinary mortals again, lost among the
world's population of fifteen hundred millions--undistinguished,
unknown--that is, if the relief gets in....

The messengers came to us apparently from nowhere, walking in after
the Chinese manner, which is quite nonchalantly, and with the sublime
calm of the East. One of the first slid in and out of the enemy's
barricades with immense effrontery at dawn, and then climbed the
Japanese defences, and produced a little ball of tissue paper from his
left ear. Fateful news contained so long in that left ear! It was a
cipher despatch from General Fukishima, chief of the staff of the
relieving Japanese columns. It said that the advance guard would reach
the outskirts of Peking on the 13th or 14th, if all went well.
Heavens, we all said, as we calculated aloud, that meant only three or
four days more....

This news was soon duplicated, for hardly had the first excitement
subsided when the news spread that a second messenger from the
British General of the relieving forces had managed to force his way
through. It was a confirmation, was his message; three or four days
more.... But the messenger, when he spoke, had other things to say. He
had been sent out by us a week before by being lowered by ropes from
the Tartar Wall. Forty miles from Peking he had met Black cavalry and
Russian cavalry miles in advance of the other soldiery. They had
charged at him and captured him, and led him before generals and
officers.... The roads leading to Peking were littered with wounded
and disbanded Chinese soldiery; there had been much fighting,