ation into the British Legation. Yes! the others are right, for on
reaching the English grounds you feel unconsciously that you have
passed from the fighting line to the hospital and commissariat base.
Here, mixed impartially with the women, crowds of vigorous men,
belonging to the junior ranks of the Legations' staffs and to numbers
of other institutions, are skulking, or getting themselves placed on
committees so as to escape duty. I suppose you could beat up a
hundred, or even a hundred and fifty, rifle-bearing effectives in an
hour. Many of the younger men were furious, and said they were quite
willing to do anything, but that everybody should be turned out.... In
the afternoon some of them fell in with my idea--volunteering under
independent command on the outer lines--and now the Japanese, the
French and the Germans have got more men. But what I wish to show you
in this rambling account is the unbalanced condition. Except in two or
three places we can be rushed in ten minutes.

III

FIRES AND FOOD

24th June, 1900.

* * * * *

I am convinced that not only does everything come to him who knows how
to wait, but that sooner or later everybody meets with their deserts.

The British Legation, allowed to sink into a somewhat somnolent
condition owing to its immunity from direct attack, has been now
rudely awakened. Fires commencing in earnest yesterday, after a few
half-hearted attempts made previously, have been raging in half a
dozen different places in this huge compound; and one incendiary,
creeping in with the stealthiness of a cat, threw his torches so
skilfully that for at least an hour the fate of the Ministerial
residences hung in the balance, and Ministerial fears assumed alarming
proportions. Again I was satisfied; everybody should sooner or later
meet with their deserts.

I have already said how the British Legation is situated. Protected on
the east and south entirely by the other Legations and linked
defences, it can run no risk from these quarters until the defenders
of these lines are beaten back by superior weight of numbers.
Partially protected on the west, owing to the fact that an immense
grass-grown park renders approach from this quarter without carefully
entrenching and barricading simple suicide, there remain but two
points of meagre dimensions at which the Chinese attack can be
successfully developed without much preliminary preparation; the
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