Indiscreet Letters From Peking Part 20

It was almost dark as we re-entered the ruined Legation lines and picked our way slowly though the _debris_ which still stood stacked on the streets. Fatigue parties of many corps were finis.h.i.+ng their work of attempting to restore some order and cleanliness, and clouds of murky dust hung heavily in the air. All round these narrow streets there was an atmosphere of exhaustion and disorder, crushed on top of one another, which oppressed one so much after the open streets, that an immense nostalgia suddenly swept over me. We had had too much of it; I was tired and weary of it all. It was mean and miserable after the great anti-climax. It was like coming back to a soiled dungeon.

We picked our way right through where two days before no vehicles could have pa.s.sed, and I stabled all the animals and carts, and handed them over to where they were needed. Then I ordered that our captured things, our weapons, and my few last belongings should be loaded into one remaining cart, and ordering my men to follow, without a word of explanation I started off again. I had made up my mind.

We pa.s.sed rapidly enough out and again sped in the blackening night down the long street just as we had returned. Almost too soon we reached that great gate on the corner to find it barred and bolted.

Somehow my heart sank within me at this; was it too late?

But there were cries and a confusion of voices. Somebody peered through. Then there was delight. The gate was unbarred by weak women's hands, and the soft Manchu voice which had first begged me to stop was speaking to me again....

Inside I found the courtyards and the lines of rooms which fronted each square were immense and furnished with richly carved woodwork; it was a rich house, and there was a profusion of everything which could be wanted--only no men! We securely bolted and barred the main gate, and for safety loopholed a little, because that is an art in which we had become adepts. Then, with candles murkily shedding their light, I explored every nook and corner to guard against surprise, always with that soft voice explaining to me. It was very quiet and soft with that atmosphere around; it was like a narcotic when a roar of fever still hangs in one's ears. I became more and more content. After all, we had become abnormals; a shade more or less could make no difference....

That night was a pleasant dream....

III

THE SACK CONTINUES

August, 1900.

To rediscover the ease and luxury of lying down, not brute-like, but man-like, seemed to me an immense thing. I had had my first night's sleep on a bed for nearly three months, and I wished never to rise again. I wished to be immensely lazy for a long period--not to have to move or think or act. But that could not be. All sorts of marauders were sweeping the city and working their wills in a hundred different ways. Half a dozen times, as soon as daylight had come, shots had been fired through my gateway. European soldiery, who had broken away from their corps, and native vagabonds and disguised Boxers, who had hidden panic-stricken during the first hours after the relief, were now prowling about armed from head to foot. The vast city, which had been given over for weeks to mad disorders and insane Boxerism, was in a receptive condition for this final climax. There was no semblance of authority left; with troops of many rival nationalities always pouring in, and a nominal state of war still existing, with the possibility of a Chinese counter-advance taking place, how could there be?... There was nothing left to restrain anybody....

I thought of these things lying at my ease, and debated how long I could stay in that unconcerned att.i.tude. It was not long. For as I lay, there was a thunder of blows somewhere near, and then a crackle of shots, whose echoes smote so clean that I knew that firearms were pointed in the direction of this house. I jumped up without delay. I was not a minute too soon, for as I seized my rifle, one of my men ran in and shouted to me that foreign cavalrymen had burst in, shooting in the air, and were now driving out all the animals and looting all the carts as well. Nothing could be done unless I lent my leaders.h.i.+p.

Hastily I ran out, feeding a cartridge into my rifle-chamber as I rushed. This time I was determined to give a lesson and pay back in the same coin. The marauders were Cossacks again.

There were only four of them, however, and when they caught sight of me they tried to stampede my mob and bolt ingloriously with them. But we were too quick. I gave the first man's mount my first cartridge in a fast shot, which took the animal well behind the shoulder and brought the rider instantly down in a heap to the ground. That mixed them up so that before they could extricate themselves they were all covered with our rifles and the gates tight shut. Then we calmly dragged the men off their ponies and kept them in suspense for many minutes, debating aloud what to do. Finally we let them go after some harsh threatening. The man who had lost his mount, nothing abashed, swung himself coolly up behind a comrade, with his saddle and bridle on his arm, without a comment. And as soon as they were in the open street they galloped fast away, as if they feared we would shoot them down from behind. That showed what was going on elsewhere....

I knew now what to expect unless we made very ready, for surely a sharp revenge attack would come as soon as it was dark. So grimly we set to work, with a return of-our old fighting feelings, and rapidly fortified the main gate against all cavalry raids. We dug a broad moat behind the gate, and threw up a respectable barricade with the earth we had gained. Then we brought some timbers and built them in on top with the aid of bricks and stones, so as to have a line of loopholes converging on the entrance. We trained some of the many rifles we had picked up in the same direction, and strapped them into position, just as the Chinese commands had done all along their barricades during the siege. In this way we made it so that in a few seconds a dozen of the enemy could be brought to the ground without the defending force showing a finger. That would be enough for any Cossacks....

Before midday we had added a couple of lookout posts to the roofs, and then, secure in this new-found strength, I determined to go abroad once more to collect supplies and food. That decision was materially helped by an incident which showed that everyone was acting and that it was the only way. As we cautiously opened our main gate and prepared to sally out, a cart came by, accompanied by several men from the Legations on horseback, who were much excited. Well might they be; they had two of their number inside that cart, both shot and bleeding badly from flesh wounds. They had been right to the east of the city, they reported, where the Russians and j.a.panese had come in. It was terrible there, they said. Nothing but dead people and fires and looting. Chinese soldiers had still remained there in hiding and were defending some of the bigger buildings belonging to Manchu princes.

Plunderers, also, were everywhere on the road. They advised caution and told us not to trust ourselves in the alleyways. They had been caught like that, and their servants and horse-boys had deserted in a body four miles away immediately fire was opened on them from some fortified house. That made me all the more determined. I would go and be shot, too, if necessary, since it was the order of the day, but I made up my mind that it would be no easy job to catch me sleeping.

Already I understood fully the new methods and the new requirements.

We rode away, stirrup to stirrup, I, a single white man, with a dozen doubtful adherents, made savage at the idea of loot, as companions, and held to me only by a questionable community of interests. Yet what did it matter, I thought. One lives only once and dies only once. That is elemental truth. So _tant pis_.

In our joy at being on those open streets again, with never a pa.s.ser-by or a vehicle to obstruct one's rapid pa.s.sage, we went ahead in a whirlwind of dust. We pa.s.sed street after street with always the same silence about us we had noticed the day before. Everything was closed, tight shut; there was not a cat or a dog stirring abroad. Near the Legations and the Palace, where the fear lay the heaviest, it seemed like a city of the dead.

Yet we knew that there were plenty of living men only biding their time and waiting their opportunity. It was only night that these people desired; a good black night so that no one could see them flit about. You felt in the small of your back as you rode along that ugly faces were looking at you from the silent houses, and that at any moment shots might ring out suddenly and bear you to the ground. But that was merely a preliminary feeling. Soon it added zest to the entertainment. What, indeed, did it matter? It only made one more and more reckless.

We sped swiftly along, only twice seeing men of any sort in several miles of streets. Once they were fellows who, on our approach, scuttled so quickly away to hide their ident.i.ty that we could not be sure whether they were white or yellow. But once, without concealment, a band of mixed European soldiery, in terrible disorder, who first wished to fire on us, and then when they saw me set up a colourless sort of cheer, appeared suddenly, only to disappear. We never paused an instant; we kept straight on.

As we made our way farther and farther to the east and came across rich districts of barricaded shops, signs were clear that pillaging had gone on here already with insane violence, but by whom or at what time it was impossible to say. Sometimes there were battered-in doors and windows, with ugly, swollen corpses stretched near by; sometimes the contents of a rich emporium had been swept, as if by some strange whirlwind, out on the street to litter the whole driving road many inches deep with the most heterogeneous things. On the ground, too, were dozens of the rude imitation flags which had been so frantically made by the terror-striken populace in order to disclaim all a.s.sociation with Boxerism and the mad Imperialism being now so summarily swept away. Jeering looters had torn these things down and cast them in the dirt to show, as a reply, that there was to be no quarter if they could help it. These grim notes limned speakingly on everything, made it plain that a movement was in the air which could hardly be arrested. It made one feel a little insane and intoxicated to see it all; and as one's blood rushed through one's veins, after that long captivity, one had, too, the desire to add a little more destruction, to break down places and to shoot for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the thing. You could not help it; it was in the air, I say. It was a subtle poison which could not be a.n.a.lysed, but which kept on coursing through one's veins and heating the blood to fever-pitch. The vast open streets needed filling up with noise and rapid movements, one thought; the inhabitants must be galvanised to life again, one felt....

My men needed every kind of wearing apparel, for they had been in rags althrough the siege, and as soon as possible they showed that they appreciated the situation, and did not intend to stand on ceremony.

They set to work as soon as they saw what they wanted. A huge Chinese boot, gaudily painted on a swinging sign-board, proclaimed a boot-shop, where in ordinary times they could buy every kind of foot-covering. But now it was no good attempting such methods. So they tilted straight at the shop-door without hesitation, and beating a wild rataplan of blows on the wooden shutters, demanded an entry in a roar of voices. Otherwise they would shoot, they added. In very few seconds, at this clamour, some shuffling steps were heard and trembling hands unbarred in haste, fearing a worse fate. We then saw two blanched and trembling shopkeepers, whose dirtied clothes and dishevelled hair showed that they had had days and nights of the most wretched existence. Shakingly they asked what we wanted, adding that they had not a piece of silver or yet a string of cash left. The Boxers had taken everything weeks before; now honourable foreign soldiery were beating them because they were so poor. My men did not trouble to answer; they went to work. They wanted boots and shoes, and plenty of them, since there were plenty to take, and so they searched and picked and chose. But presently one man gave vent to an oath, and them, in his surprise, laughed coa.r.s.ely. He had discovered that there were only boots and shoes for the left foot. There was nothing for the right foot, not a single boot, not a single shoe! Once again they did not trouble to speak, but merely pus.h.i.+ng fire-pieces against the luckless shopkeepers' heads waited in silence. Immediately the men broke down anew and began whining more explanations. It was true there were no right feet, they said. The right feet were over there in a neighbour's shop. That shop had all the right feet; they had only left feet. This seemed strange humour. Yet it was a good, if crude, device which these cunning shopkeepers had hit on even in their distress. For they knew that looters would probably not waste time attempting to match shoes in such confusion, when so much better things were lying near. They hoped at least to save their stock by this device; and it seemed certain that they would. I said not a word; this was a family affair.

In the end a bargain was struck; two pairs of shoes for each man, and the rest to be left untouched. Then the right feet appeared soon enough from hidden places, and the shopmen were saved from further loss. With all the other things the same procedure was adopted along this shopman's street. A bargain was struck in each case, which saved one side from undue loss and gave the other far less trouble. In this new fas.h.i.+on we captured chickens, eggs, sheep, rice, flour, and a dozen other necessaries, only taking a quarter of what we would have seized otherwise, in return for the help given. It was curious shopping, but everybody was curious now. What you did not take, somebody would seize ten minutes later.

These occupations were so peaceful and gave so little difficulty, that it soon seemed to me as if everything was actually settling down quietly in this one corner of the city. Yet it was not so. We were only having momentary luck. For presently soldiers of various nationalities began pa.s.sing in many directions, some returning from successful forays, and others just starting out to see what they could pick up. And on top of them all came a curious young fellow from one of the Legations, galloping along on a big white horse he must have just looted. He was accompanied by no one. He had been half-mad for weeks during the siege and now seemed quite crazy as he rode.

It was he who had again and again volunteered to play the part of executioner to all the wretched coolies engaged in sapping under our lines who had been captured from time to time, and whose heads had at once paid the last penalty. This man had done it always with a shot-gun, and he had seemed to gloat over it; and in the end people had taken a detestation for him, and looked upon him for some strange reason as a little unclean. Now he was madly excited, and as soon as he saw me he called out, in his thick Brussels accent, and made a long broken speech, which I shall never forget.

"Have you seen them?" he said, not pausing for a reply. "It is the sight of all others--the best of all. Hsu Tung, you remember, the Imperial Tutor, who wished to make covers for his sedan chair with our hides, and who was allowed to escape when we had him tight? Well, he is swinging high now from his own rafters, he and his whole household--wives, children, concubines, attendants, everyone. There are sixteen of them in all--sixteen, all swinging from ropes tied on with their own hands, and with the chairs on which they stood kicked from under them. That they did in their death struggles. Everywhere they have acted in the same way. They call it hanging, but it is not that; it is really slow strangulation, which lasts for many minutes, because at the last moment the victims become afraid and try to regain their footholds."

The man paused a minute and licked his dry lips. To me there was something hideous in this story being told on that sacked street. His voice sounded a little like those Chinese trumpets, whose gurgling notes make one think instantly of evil things. Then he went on, more furiously than ever:

"And the wells near the Eastern Gates, have you seen them, where all the women and girls have been jumping in? They are full of women and young girls--quite full, because they were afraid of the troops, especially of the black troops. The black troops become insane, the people say, when they see women. So the women killed themselves wherever they heard the guns. Now they are hauling up the dead bodies so that the wells will not be poisoned. I have seen them take six and seven bodies from the same well, all clinging together, and the men have tried to kill me because I looked. But I was well mounted; I could look as long as I liked, and then gallop away so fast that not even their shots could catch me. The place is full of dead people, nothing but dead people everywhere, and more are dying every minute."

Then he came up to me and whispered how soldiers were behaving after they had outraged women. It was impossible to listen. He said that our own inhuman soldiery had invited him to stay and see. Yet although I swore at the man and told him to go away, I could not drive him from me. He wanted to talk and he had found some one who had to listen.

Indeed, he clung to me all the way home, as if he had been at length frightened by his own stories and by his imagination. Steadily he became more and more curious. He watched me eat, he watched me drink, but he would take nothing himself. He wanted to go out again. He must have movement, he said, and he insisted on riding to Monseigneur F----'s Pei-t'ang Cathedral. He had not been there yet, and a curiosity suddenly seized him to see the place where others had suffered in the same way as ourselves. That reminded me, too, that everybody had almost forgotten about this Roman Catholic cathedral, forgotten completely because they were now at their ease. It had been two whole days before troops were even sent there to see that all was well, and even these only went because a priest had been killed half way between the Legations and the Cathedral. I decided to go, too. It was almost a duty to make this pilgrimage. So we quickly left again.

For a few minutes after leaving the occupied area we threaded streets with men from the relief columns in full view, but soon enough we found ourselves in treacherous roadways, all littered with the ruins and the inexpressible confusion which come of desultory street-fighting spread over long weeks. To me this was a new quarter--one which I had not been near since the month of May, and soon it was equally clear that it was still a very evil place. Only yesterday men who had broken away from the French corps were found here, some dead and some horribly mutilated. Yet in spite of this the same signs of mock friendliness greeted our eyes on every side--those fluttering little flags of all nations, so rudely made from whatever cloth had been handy. Every building displayed some flag--every single one; but there now were other signs, too--signs which showed that all this quarter had been picked so clean that it was of no more value to marauders. Little notices, some in French, some in English, and a few in other tongues, were scratched on the walls or written on dirty sc.r.a.ps of paper and nailed up. Half in jest and half in earnest, these curious notices said all manner of things. For the wretched people who had been plundered or otherwise ill used had already fallen into the habit of asking from the soldiery for some sc.r.a.p of writing which would prove that they had contributed their quota, and might, therefore, be exempted from further looting. Scrawled in soldiers'

hands were such things as, "_Defense absolue de piller; nous autres avons tout pris_"; or, "No looting permitted. This show is cleaned out." Everywhere these signs were to be seen. Here they must have worked fast and furiously....

Riding quickly, at last we reached the famous cathedral, with great trenches and earthworks surrounding it, and the torn and battered buildings showing how bitter the struggle had been. To our siege-taught eyes a single look explained the nature of the defence, and the lines which had been naturally formed. It was written as plain as on a map. The priests and their allies had now hauled the enemy's abandoned guns to the cathedral entrances and the spires were now crowned with garlands of flags of all nations. But that was all. There was no one to be seen. Everybody was away, out minding the new business--that of making good the damage done by levying contributions on the city at large. It was all dead quiet, silent like some deserted graveyard. The sailors and the priests and their converts, remembering that Heaven helps those who help themselves, had sallied out and were reprovisioning themselves and making good their losses. Indeed, the only men we could find were some converts engaged in stacking up silver shoes, or _sycee_, in a secluded quadrangle. These had become the property of the mission by the divine right of capture; there seemed at the moment nothing strange about it.

This silent cathedral, with its vast grounds and its deserted quadrangles torn up by the savage conflict, became to us curiously oppressive--almost ghostlike in the bright suns.h.i.+ne. It seemed absurd to imagine that forty or fifty rifle-armed sailors, a band of priests and many thousands of converts had been ringed in here by fire and smoke for weeks, and had lost dozens and hundreds at a time through mine explosions. It seemed, also, equally absurd that the twenty or thirty thousand men who had poured into Peking had already become so quickly lost in the expanses of the city. Where were they all?...

My mad companion had tired, too, of looking, and wanted again to rush off and discover some signs of life. He wanted, above all, to see the place where the first companies of the French infantry had suddenly come on a mixed crowd of Boxers, soldiers and townspeople fleeing in panic all mixed together, and had mown them down with _mitrailleuses_.

There was a cul-de-sac, which was horrible, it was reported. The machine-guns had played for ten or fifteen minutes in that death-trap without stopping a second until nothing had moved. The incident was only a day or two old, yet everyone had heard of it. People exclaimed that this was going too far in the matter of vengeance. But everything had been allowed to go too far....

We rode out at a canter, and wondered more and more as we rode at the solitude, where so few hours before there had been such a deafening roar. We plunged straight into the maze of narrow streets, and then suddenly, before we were aware of it, our mounts were swerving and snorting in mad terror! For corpses dotted the ground in ugly blotches, the corpses of men who had met death in a dozen different ways. Lying in exhausted att.i.tudes, they covered the roadway as if they had been merely _tired to death_. It was awful, and I began to have a terrible detestation for these Asiatic faces, which, because they are dead, become such a hideous green-yellow-white, and whose bodies seem to shrivel to nothing in their limp blue suitings. Such dead are an insult to the living.

We picked our way on our trembling mounts, trying vainly to push through quickly to escape it all. But it was no good. We had stumbled by chance on the actual route taken by an avenging column, and the men who had been mad with l.u.s.t to loot the Palace, and had been turned off almost as an afterthought to relieve co-religionists, had vented their wrath on everything. The farther and farther we penetrated the more hideous did the ruins and the corpses become. There was nothing but silence once again--death, ruin, and silence; and at last we came on such a mountain of corpses that our ponies suddenly stampeded and went madly careering away. Frightened more and more by the sound of their galloping hoofs, the animals soon laid their legs to the ground and bolted blindly. Vainly we tugged at our bridles; vainly we tried every device to bring them to a halt. But again it was no good. It had become a sort of mad gallop of death; the animals had to be allowed to rid themselves of their feelings.

Eventually we pulled up far away to the west of where we had started.

We were now near the districts which had only the day before been proclaimed highly dangerous to everyone until clearing operations had swept them clean of lurking Boxers or disbanded soldiery. But now attracted by a roar of flames, and indifferent to any dangers which might lurk near by, we followed up the trail of smoke hanging on the skies to see what was taking place. One's interest never ceased, yet it was only the same thing. French soldiers, some drunk and some merely savage, had found their way here by some strange fate, and being quite-alone had evidently looted and then set fire to a big pile of buildings. They were discharging their rifles, too; for as we approached, bullets whistled overhead, and sobbing townspeople, driven from their hiding-places, began rus.h.i.+ng away in every direction. This was strange.

Our arrival was only the signal for a fresh discharge of rifles, and then there was no doubt who was attracting the fire. The men were deliberately aiming at us to drive us away! We halted behind cover, and then with the same callousness as they displayed, we gave them a volley back, as a note of warning. It was my insane companion who drove us to do that; but, forthwith, on the sound of that well-knit discharge, there was more firing on every side, some shots coming from houses quite close to us and some from the open streets. With the growing roar and crackle of the flames these shots made very insignificant popping and attracted but little attention. Yet I soon saw that this continuous firing could not come from the rifles of European soldiery, unless there were whole companies of them, and that perhaps we had been mistaken for other people. And soon my suspicions were confirmed by a confused shouting in the vernacular, and a rush of men from lanes not a hundred yards away. Then there were some half-suppressed blasts on the hideous Chinese trumpet and--Chinese soldiery....

They came out with a mad rush and charged straight at the drunken French marauders, firing quickly as they ran after the old manner which we knew so well. As we gazed, the men from the relief columns fell back in disorder without any hesitation--indeed, fled madly to the nearest houses and began pelting their a.s.sailants with lead in return. Suppressed trumpet-blasts came again, rallying the attackers; more and more men rushed out from all sorts of places, and as this was no affair of ours, and our retreat would certainly be cut off if we dallied, we retreated at full gallop farther and farther to the west.

We were going straight away to where might be our d.a.m.nation.

I do not remember clearly how far we rode, or why we galloped, but soon we arrived almost at the flanking city walls miles away, and found ourselves among scores and hundreds of the enemy, who were still lurking on the streets, half disguised and mixed with the townspeople.

They fired at us as we rode; they fired at us when we stopped; for many minutes there was nothing to be heard but the hissing of lead and fierce yells....

Conscious that only a big effort would pull us through, we boldly turned bridle and galloped to the south--reached a city gate, went through at a frantic pace, and sought safety in the outer Chinese town. Here it was quieter for a time, but as once more we approached the central streets, down which the Allies had marched, we came across other marauders. This time they were Indian troops going about in bands, with only their side arms with them, but leaving the same destruction behind them. Then we came across Americans, again some French, then some Germans, until it became an endless procession of looting men--conquerors and conquered mixed and indifferent....

It was eight at night before I pulled up on my foundered mount at home. I confess I had had enough. We were dead with fatigue. This was too much after one had those weeks of siege.

IV