the dry canal in
our centre. The Chinese sharpshooters saw him and must have thought
him a messenger. Soon their rifles crashed at him, and the old man
fell hit, but remained alive. After a while he raised himself on his
hands and knees and began crawling towards his countrymen like a poor,
stricken dog, in the hope that they would spare him when they saw his
condition. But pitilessly once more the rifles crashed out, and this
time their bullets found a billet in his vital parts, for the beggar
rolled over and remained motionless. There he now lies where he was
shot down in the dust and dirt, and his white beard and his rotting
rags seem to raise a silent and eloquent protest to high Heaven
against the devilish complots which are racking Peking.

The feeding of our native Christians, an army of nearly two thousand,
is still progressing, but babies are dying rapidly, and nothing
further can be done.

There is only just so much rice, and the men who are doing the heavy
coolie work on the fortifications must be fed better than the rest or
else no food at all would be needed....

The native children, with hunger gnawing savagely at their stomachs,
wander about stripping the trees of their leaves until half Prince
Su's grounds have leafless branches. Some of the mothers have taken
all the clothes off their children on account of the heat, and their
terrible water-swollen stomachs and the pitiful sticks of legs
eloquently tell their own tale. Unable to find food, all are drinking
enormous quantities of water to stave off the pangs of hunger. A man
who has been in India says that all drink like this in famine time,
which inflates the stomach to a dangerous extent, and is the
forerunner of certain death.

To the babies we give all the scraps of food we can gather up after
our own rough food is eaten, and to see the little disappointed faces
when there is nothing is sadder than to watch the wounded being
carried in. If we ever get out we have some heavy scores to settle,
and some of our rifles will speak very bitterly.

Thus enclosed in our brick-bound lines, each of us is spinning out his
fate. The Europeans still have as much food as they need; the Chinese
are half starving; shot and shell continue; stinks abound; rotting
carcases lie festering in the sun; our command is looser than ever. It
is the merest luck we are still holding out. Perhaps to-morrow it will
be over. In any case, the glory has long since departed, an