They had drawn the enemy's fire. Great was the dismay when the
news became generally known; it meant that the authority of
headquarters had received a cruel blow. There is no officer left who
can really perform the duties of the chief of the staff, and all the
outer lines will feel this loosening of a control which has really
only been complimentary and nominal. Casualties among the officers of
the other detachments had allowed the British marine commanders to
increase their influence. Now it is finished. The only two good ones
have now been struck off the list.

All day long men looked gloomily about them, and felt that gradually
but surely things were progressing from bad to worse. Six of the best
officers have either been killed or so badly wounded that they cannot
possibly take the field again; about fifty of our most daring regulars
and volunteers have been killed outright; the number of admittances to
the hospital up to date is one hundred and ten; and thus of the four
hundred and fifty rifles defending our lines, nearly a third have been
placed out of action in less than four weeks. Excepting for a small
gap across the Northern Imperial canal bridge, a continuous double, or
even treble, line of the enemy's barricades now stretch unbroken from
a point opposite the American positions on the Tartar Wall round in a
vast irregular curve to the city wall overlooking the German Legation.

These barricades are becoming more and more powerful, and are being
pushed so close to us by a system of parallels and traverses that at
the Su wang-fu and the French lines only a few feet separate some of
our own defences from the enemy's. Already it had twice happened that
a fierce and unique deed had taken place at the same loophole between
one of our men and a Chinese brave, ending in the shooting of one or
the other, forcing a retirement on our part to the next line of
barricades. Thus, by sheer weight of brickwork they are crushing us
in, and if they have only two weeks' more uninterrupted work, it can
only end in one way. Colonel S---- has made two more frantic sorties,
in both of which I took part at daybreak, with a few men, which
succeeded each time in pushing back the enemy for a few days in one
particular corner at the cost of casualties we cannot afford. But the
work and the strain are becoming exhausting, and even the Japanese,
who are being driven by little S---- like mules, are showing the
effects in their lack-lustre