is still fencing, because the Palace cannot make up its mind whether
the time has really come when it must act. This lack of decision is
fatal.

Late in the afternoon it transpired that the Empress Dowager was not
in the Imperial city at all, but out at the Summer Palace on the
Wan-shou-shan--the hills of ten thousand ages, as these are poetically
called. Tung Fu-hsiang, whose ruffianly Kansu braves were marched out
of the Chinese city--that is the outer ring of Peking--two nights
before the Legation Guards came in, is also with the Empress, for his
cavalry banners, made of black and blue velvet, with blood-red
characters splashed splendidly across them, have been seen planted at
the foot of the hills. Tung Fu-hsiang is an invincible one, who
stamped out the Kansu rebellion a few years ago with such fierceness
that his name strikes terror to-day into every Chinese heart. As for
P'i Hsiao-li--the false eunuch--he is everywhere, they say, sometimes
here, sometimes there, and quite defying search. The eunuch has a
mighty fortune at stake, and all natives believe that he will betray
himself. Half the pawnshops and banks of Peking belong to him, and he
will not sacrifice his thirty million taels until he is convinced that
his head is at stake. The Summer Palace lies but a dozen miles beyond
Peking's embattled walls, and from the top, straining your eyes to the
west, you can vaguely see the Empress's plaisaunce. A journey in and
out is nothing by cart, and this favoured eunuch has the best mules in
the Empire--black jennets fifteen hands high--and is using them night
and day. And so everyone is asking again and again whether the
Empress has arranged with Prince Tuan, since that is the burning
question; and did this eunuch of eunuchs have his fateful confidential
interview with the secret Boxer leaders, which was to decide finally
on extermination.