n is merely a
plaything. And yet being the best we have, it is wheeled unendingly
around and fired at the enemy from a dozen different points. It may
give confidence, but that is all it can give. The other day I watched
it at work on a heavy barricade being constructed by night and day by
the methodical enemy. By night the Chinese soldiery work as openly as
they please, for no outpost may waste its ammunition by indiscriminate
shooting. But during the day, orders or no orders, it has become rash
for the enemy to expose himself to our view; and even the fleeting
glimpse of a moving hand is made the excuse for a hailstorm of fire.
This has made excessive caution the order of the day, and you can
almost believe, when no rifles are firing to disturb such a
conviction, that there are only dead men round us. Yet with nothing to
be seen, countless hands are at work; in spite of the greatest
vigilance barricades and barriers grow up nearer and nearer to us both
night and day; we are being tied in tighter. These mysterious
barricades, built in parallels, are so cunningly constructed that our
fiercest sorties must in the end beat themselves to pieces against
brick and stone; if the enemy can complete his plans we shall be
choked silently. That is why the Italian gun is so often
requisitioned.

I was saying that I watched the one-pounder at work against the
enemy's brick-bound lines. Each time, as ammunition is becoming
precious, the gun was more carefully sighted and fired, and each time,
with a little crash, the baby shell shot through the barricades,
boring a ragged hole six or eight inches in diameter. Two or three
times this might always be accomplished with everything on the Chinese
side silent as death. The cunning enemy! Then suddenly, as the gun was
shifted a bit to continue the work of ripping up that barricade,
attention would be distracted, and before you could explain it the
ragged holes would be no more. Unseen hands had repaired the damage by
pushing up dozens of bricks and sandbags, and before the game could be
opened again, unseen rifles were rolling off in their dozens and
tearing the crests of our outworks. In that storm of brick-chips,
split sandbags and dented nickel, you could not move or reply. That is
the Italian gun.

The next most useful weapon should be the Austrian machine-gun, which
is a very modern weapon, and throws Mannlicher bullets at the rate of
six hundred to the minute. Yet it, too, is pract