rvening
walls and trees and the sloping Chinese roofs which pen us in on all
sides, the nickel, iron and lead of Mannlicher and Mauser rifles and
Tower muskets are soon converted into mere discordant humming-birds,
whose greatest inconvenience is their sound. Never have I heard such a
humming as these spent ricochets make.

Fifty feet past this southern stone bridge you meet the first Russian
barricade, with half a dozen tired Russian sailors sleeping on the
ground and a sleepy-eyed lookout man leaning on his rifle. This
barricade faces in both directions in the shape of a V, and under its
protection this part of Legation Street is supposed to be safe from a
rush, if the men stand firm. In the Russian and American Legations it
is everywhere the same story--barricades and loopholed houses and
outworks, now mostly crowned with sandbags, succeed one another with a
regularity which becomes monotonous. But on this western side the
bullets are few and far between as yet, and sometimes for a few
seconds a curious quiet reigns, only broken by the distant and
muffled hum of sound and crackling towards the east. Decidedly up to
date it is the Japanese and the French and their companions who have
all the honours in the matter of cannonading and fusillading, and the
Germans are soon going to be not far behind them. Right up on the
Tartar Wall I found the American marines once again lying mutinously
silent. They, too, do not like it, frankly and unreservedly; and as I
lay up there and told them what I had seen elsewhere, an old fellow
with a beard said it was S----, the first secretary, who had insisted
on their stopping, and had almost had a fight with everyone about it.
The old marine told me that the other men would be damned--he used the
word in a wistful sort of way which had nothing profane about it--if
they stopped much longer. They wanted other people to share the
honours; they did not see why every man should not have a turn at the
same duty.... I was glad these Americans were making this fuss, for
everything is just as unbalanced as it was at the beginning, and there
is no sort of confidence anywhere. After three days of siege the only
clear thing I can see is that there are a lot of bad tempers, and that
the few good men are saving the situation by acting independently to
the best of their ability and are not trying to understand anything
else.

Much depressed, I at last slipped down through the back of the Russian
Leg