gly informed me that the flight had taken place
at nine o'clock exactly the previous night, and had been carried out
by way of the Northern Gates of the city. They had left five hours
after the relief had come in! I calculated quickly. That meant twenty
hours' start at four miles an hour--for they would travel frantically
night and day--eighty miles! It was hopeless; they were safe through
the first mountain-passes, and if they had soldiery with them, as was
more than certain, these had most certainly been dropped at the
formidable barriers which nature has interposed just forty miles
beyond Peking. The mountain-passes would protect them. There could be
no vengeance exacted; no retribution could overtake the real authors
of this _debacle_. Nothing. It was a strange end....

Disconsolately I turned and rode back into the Legation lines, feeling
as if an immense misfortune had come. Here I met finally some Japanese
cavalry and some Cossacks. After being actually in Peking twenty-four
hours, they had at length formed junction with their Legations. The
cavalrymen were trotting up and down, and trying to discover their own
people. Neither did they understand it all.

I communicated the news I had learned speedily enough to all people of
importance whom I could find, told it to them all frantically; but it
aroused no interest, even hardly any comment. Once or twice there was
a start of surprise, and then the old attitude of indifference. A
species of torpor seems to have come over everyone as a crushing
anti-climax after the various climaxes of the terrible weeks. No one
cares, excepting that the siege is finished. C----, of the British
Legation, who has practically directed its policy for years (indeed,
ever since it has been in the present hands), told me that when the
British commander had come in, he had simply placed himself at the
disposal of the Legation, and had said that his orders were concerned
only with the relief. He was not to attempt anything else; to do
nothing more, absolutely nothing....

Later in the afternoon, at a Ministerial meeting, convened in haste,
the Ministers decided that as they did not know what was going to
happen to them or what policy their governments proposed to adopt, in
the absence of instructions they could take no steps about anything.
Of course, everyone of importance will be transferred elsewhere, and
probably be sent to South America, or the Balkan States, or possibly
Athens. The