things until times like these. With upturned Peking carts blocking the
ingresses to our quarter; with everything disgruntled and out of
order; with native Christians crowding in on us, sensible heathen
servants bolting as hard as they can, ice running short, we, the
eleven Legations of Peking, await with some fear and trepidation and
an ever-increasing discomfort our various fates under the shadow of
the gloomy Tartar Wall. What is to be the next thing? I could possibly
imagine and write something about this were I not so tired.




XII

HELL HOUNDS


Night, 17th June 1900.

* * * * *

It is past twelve o'clock at night, but in spite of the late hour and
my fatigue--I have been dead tired for a week now--I am writing this
with the greatest ease, my pen gliding, as it were, over a surface of
ice-like slippiness, although my fingers are all blistered from manual
work. Why, you will ask? Well, simply because my imagination is afire,
and taking complete control of such minor things as the nerves and
muscles of my right arm, my eyes and my general person, it speeds me
along with astonishing celerity. Let your imagination be aflame and
you can do anything....