possibility of vengeance? Was it really so? One might have known that
this loose-jointed relief expedition could accomplish nothing, would
do everything wrong; and still we were acting as if everything was in
our hands. Then, suddenly, I fined down my questions, and imperatively
asked when the Court had fled; exactly at what hour and in what
direction.

At first I could get no reliable answer, but, pushing my questions and
assuming a threatening attitude, the shattered eunuch at length
collapsed, and whiningly informed me that the flight had taken place
at nine o'clock exactly the previous night, and had been carried out
by way of the Northern Gates of the city. They had left five hours
after the relief had come in! I calculated quickly. That meant twenty
hours' start at four miles an hour--for they would travel frantically
night and day--eighty miles! It was hopeless; they were safe through
the first mountain-passes, and if they had soldiery with them, as was
more than certain, these had most certainly been dropped at the
formidable barriers which nature has interposed just forty miles
beyond Peking. The mountain-passes would protect them. There could be
no vengeance exacted; no retribution could overtake the real authors
of this _debacle_. Nothing. It was a strange end....

Disconsolately I turned and rode back into the Legation lines, feeling
as if an immense misfortune had come. Here I met finally some Japanese
cavalry and some Cossacks. After being actually in Peking twenty-four
hours, they had at length formed junction with their Legations. The
cavalrymen were trotting up and down, and trying to discover their own
people. Neither did they understand it all.

I communicated the news I had learned speedily enough to all people of