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 practically useless.  It has been tried everywhere and found to be defective.  When it rattles at full speed, it has been seen that its sighting is illusory—­that it throws erratically high in the air, and that ammunition is simply wasted.  It cannot help us in the slightest.  The value of machine-guns has been always overrated.

Then there is a Nordenfeldt belonging to the British marines, and a very small Colt, which was brought up by the Americans.  The Nordenfeldt is absolutely useless and now refuses to work; the Colt is so small, being single-barrelled, that it can only do boy’s work.  Yet this Colt is the most satisfactory of all, and when we have dragged it out with us and played it on the enemy, it has shot true and straight.  They say it has killed more men than all the rest put together....

There should be a Russian gun, too—­a good Russian gun of respectable calibre.  But although the shells were brought, a thousand of them, too, the gun was forgotten at the Tientsin Station!  Such a thing could only happen to Russians, everybody says.  But some people say it was forgotten on purpose, because De G——­ had received absolute assurance from the Chinese Government that the Russian Legation would not be attacked under any circumstances, and that sailors were only brought up to keep faith with the other Powers....

This miserable list, as you will see, means that we have nothing with which to reply to the enemy’s fire.  We are not so proud and foolish as to wish to silence the guns ranged against us, but, at least, we should be able to make some reply.  In desperation, the sailor-gunners tried to manufacture a crude piece of ordnance by lashing iron and steel together, and encasing it in wood.  Fortunately it was never fired, for in the nick of time an old rusty muzzle-loader has been discovered in a blacksmith’s shop within our lines, and has been made to fire the Russian ammunition by the exercise of much ingenuity.  It belches forth mainly flames, and smokes and makes a terrific report.  Some say this is as useful as a modern twelve-pounder....