has orders to follow, his own ideas, and his own ideas do not fancy the unattached Austrian captain of a man-of-war.  So the concerted plan of defence has only been evolved very suddenly, a plan which has resolved itself naturally into each detachment-commander holding his own Legation as long as he could, and being vaguely linked to his neighbour by picquets of two or three men.  But about this you will understand more later on.  The point I wish you now to realise is that the counsels of the allied countries of Europe in the persons of their Legation Guards’ commanders are as effective as those of very juvenile kindergartens.  Everybody is intensely jealous of everybody else and determined not to give way on the question of the supreme command.  Of course, if the storm comes suddenly, without any warning, we are doomed, because you cannot hold an area a mile square with a lot of men who are fighting among themselves, and who have fallen too quickly into our miserably petty Peking scheme of things.

IX

THE COMING OF THE BOXERS

14th June, 1900.

* * * * *

I had risen yesterday some what late in the day with the oddness and uncomfortableness—­I do not mean discomfort—­which comes from too much boots, too much disturbance of one’s ordinary routine, too much listening to people airing their opinions and recounting rumours, and, last of all, very wearied by the uncustomary task of transporting a terrible battery of hand artillery (for we are at last all heavily armed); and consequent of these varied things, I, like everybody else, was a good deal out of temper and rather sick of it all.  I began to ask myself this question:  Were we really playing an immense comedy, or was there a great and terrible peril menacing us?  I could never get beyond asking the question.  I could not think sanely long enough for the answer.

The day passed slowly, and very late in the afternoon, when some of us had completed a tour of the Legations, and looked at their various picquets, I finished up at the Austrian Legation and the Customs Street.  Men were everywhere sitting about, idly watching the dusty and deserted streets, half hoping that something was going to happen shortly, when suddenly there was a shout and a fierce running of feet.  Something had happened.

We all jumped up as if we had been shot, for we had been sitting very democratically on the sidewalk, and round the corner, running with the speed of the scared, came a youthful English postal carrier.  That was all at first.