and you have absolutely no physical sensation of fear; but the mercury of both the barometer and the thermometer has been somehow badly shaken, and the mainsprings of all watches and clocks, although still much as the mainsprings of clocks and watches in other parts of the world—­bringing your mind to bear on it you know they are exactly the same—­are merely mechanism, and allow the day to have at least forty-two hours.  It is strange, is it not, and you begin to understand vaguely some of the quite impossible Indian metaphysics which tell you gravely that what is, is not, and that what is not can still be....  In the crushing heat you can understand that.

Perhaps it is all because the hours are now split into ten separate and different parts by the fierce rumours which rage for a few minutes and then, dissipating their strength through their very violence, die away as suddenly as they came.  The air is charged with electricity of human passions until it throbs painfully, and then....  You are merrily eating your tiffin or your dinner, and quite calmly cursing your “boy” because something is not properly iced.  Your “boy,” who is a Bannerman or Manchu and of Roman Catholic family, as are all servants of polite Peking society, does not move a muscle nor show any passing indignation, as he would were the ordinary rules and regulations of life still in existence.  He, like everyone of the hundreds of thousands of Peking and the millions of North China, is waiting—­waiting more patiently than impatient Westerners, but waiting just as anxiously; waiting with ear wide open to every rumour; waiting with an eye on every shadow—­to know whether the storm is going to break or blow away.  There is something disconcerting, startling, unseemly in being waited on by those who you know are in turn waiting on battle, murder, and sudden death.  You feel that something may come suddenly at any moment, and though you do not dare to speak your thoughts to your neighbour, these thoughts are talking busily to you without a second’s interruption.  For if this storm truly comes, it must sweep everything before it and blot us all out in a horrible way.  Our servants tell us so.

These servants of polite Peking society are favoured mortals, for they one and all are of the Eight Banners, direct descendants of the Manchu conquerors of China.  And, strangely enough, although they are thus directly tied to the Manchu dynasty, and that some of them may be even Red Girdles or lineal descendants of collateral branches of the Imperial house, they are still more tightly tied to the foreigner because they are Roman Catholic dating from the early days of Verbiest and Schall, when the Jesuits were all supreme.  On Sundays and feast days they all proceed to the Vicar Apostolic’s own northern cathedral, and witness the Elevation of the Host to the discordant and strange sound of Chinese firecrackers, a curious accompaniment, indeed, permitted only by Catholic complacency.  This they love more than the Throne.