Behind the scenes in Peking : $b Being experiences during the siege of the LegationsHooker, Mary
History
Behind the scenes in Peking : $b Being experiences during the siege of the Legations
Hooker, Mary
Beijing (China) -- History -- Siege, 1900
Firing seems to continue at all times, but it is mostly over our heads.
Yesterday Boxers tried to loot and fire the Dutch Legation, which is
next to ours, and Captain Myers turned our machine-gun on the crowd for
a minute and killed six Boxers, so the attempt to loot was not
successful, but the burning of the compound continues. The Methodist
Mission, so lately vacated, was looted and burned last night. So much
happens in every twenty-four hours I can hardly keep account of it all,
and as a background to the hourly horrors that develop is the continuous
snipe, snipe, sniping, mostly by our own men, who are on roofs of
buildings shooting at the constantly approaching incendiaries.
All food-supplies which can be procured in any way from anywhere by
anyone have now to be turned in to the committee in charge of food, and
everything is deposited with them on the erstwhile tennis-court of the
British Legation, which is their headquarters. In fact, everything of a
useful nature is stored there, whence it will later be distributed where
most needed. The two foreign shops in Peking are Imbeck’s and Kieruff’s,
and as they are too far up Legation Street to be defended in any way,
they have been abandoned by their owners with their contents. The
committee on food-supplies, although greatly desiring the stores on the
shelves of these shops, would not attempt to get them, as anyone making
the attempt would become a perfect target for Boxer snipers as soon as
he left the protection of our last barricade on Legation Street.
Imagine our surprise when, late in the afternoon, a Chinese cart, driven
by Fargo Squiers, a boy of fifteen years old, came thundering into the
British compound with the upper part of the cart riddled with
bullet-holes. He was heading for the two rooms in Dr. Poole’s house
which had been allotted to his family, and his freight consisted of
dozens of tins of the above-mentioned supplies from Imbeck’s
death-surrounded shop, which he had procured at the greatest risk to his
own life. The committee were about to order him to unload his desirable
cargo with them, to be used for the good of the public, but upon hearing
that the boy had ridden into the very jaws of death to procure these
supplies, and had dared what no man in the compound had dared to do,
they told him he could have the disposition of them, for by his rash
valour he had well earned the lot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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