set down exactly so that everyone might understand the incidents and
the sudden impulses which took place--all prompted by that master of
human beings--FEAR. That is why we worship heroes, or we pretend we
worship them, because it is the _culte_. For a moment these people who
have been set on pedestals were not afraid. Is it only the power not
to be afraid which makes one a hero?




XV

THE DEBACLE BEGINS


20th June, 1900.

* * * * *

It is notorious that in moments of tension, when the mind has been
stimulated to too great an activity by unhealthy excitement, you think
of the most curiously assorted things--in fact, of absurd things which
are quite out of place. I have been thinking the whole time of
something very stupid which is only fiction: That a Zulu, named
Umslopagas, rode and ran one hundred miles in a single night and then
refreshed himself sufficiently by a couple of hours' sleep to deliver
battle with such vigour at the head of a marble staircase, that he
saved the haggard hero. That is what I have been thinking of....

We of Peking are, unfortunately, not of the mettle of Zulus, and as