re dislodged all around him, and once he received
one on the head. The little man rubbed his cranium ruefully, shook
himself like a dog to get rid of the sting, and then with a little
more caution began his strange performance again. This is what is
going on all round the Japanese posts--men bobbing up and firing
rapidly, in some cases only fifty feet away from one another. The
Italians are lying comfortably on their stomachs completely out of
sight, and wildly volleying far too often. Already their ammunition
is running low, although there is hardly any need really to reply at
all to our enemies. They have crept closer, it is true, and without
surprising any one, or even causing notice, their numbers of riflemen
have grown from hour to hour. Now I come to think of it, there must be
many hundreds of men lying all round us and firing just as they
please. But they are hidden behind walls and ruined houses; they
belong to our curious state; they are the essential things after all.
How foolish one becomes!

Threading your way due south you come suddenly on a French picquet,
four Frenchmen and two Austrians behind a heavy barricade. This
precious Su wang-fu is merely linked to the French Legation by a
system of such posts audaciously feeble when you consider the duty
they have to undertake--to keep up a connection hundreds of yards long
which any moment may be broken in a dozen places by a determined rush
of the enemy. This first French post is the extreme left of the French
defence, and it is only after some long alleyways that you come on the
centre itself. Here on roofs, squatting behind loopholes, and even on
tree-tops, though these are very dangerous, French and Austrian
sailors exchange shots with the enemy. Half a dozen men have been
already hit here, but in spite of the strictest orders men are
fearlessly exposing themselves and reaping the inevitable result. It
is only at the beginning that one is so unwise. One giant Austrian had
spread himself across the top of a roof near which I passed, with two
sandbags to protect his head, and looked in his blue-black sailors
clothes like an enormous fly squashed flat up there by the anger of
the gods. Now leaning this way, now that, he flashed off a Mannlicher
there towards the Italian Legation, where only one hundred hours ago
no one ever dreamed that Chinese desperadoes would have made our
normal life such a distant memory.

As I came up the French commander allowed the r