About the Chinese guns we can find out very little, excepting that none, or very few, of the modern weapons which are in stock at Peking have been used against us.  There are at most only nine or ten in constant use; perhaps the others have been dragged away down the long Tientsin road.  But even these nine or ten, if they were worked together, would nearly wreck us.  Our sorties have pushed some of them back.

Two of these guns are being fired at us from a staging on the Palace wall—­sometimes regularly and persistently, sometimes as if they had fallen under the influence of the conflicting factors which are struggling to win the day in the Palace.  If they bombarded us without intermission for twenty-four hours, they would render the British Legation almost untenable.  Two or three more guns are on the Tartar Wall; three or four are ranged against the Su wang-fu and French lines; some are kept travelling round us searching for a weak spot.  They have no system or fire-discipline.  Some use shrapnel and segment; others fire solid round shot all covered with rust.  Silent sometimes with a mysterious silence for days at a time, they come to life again suddenly in a blaze of activity, and wreak more ruin in a few minutes than weeks of rifle fusillade and days of firing on the fringe of outer buildings.  And yet we cannot complain.  We have so many walls, so many houses, so many trees, so many obstructions of every kind, that they cannot get a clear view of anything.  These singing shells, which might breach any one part, were the guns massed and their fire continuous, are sneered at by most of us already.  Provided you can lie low, shell-fire soon loses even its moral effect.

XI

SNIPING

* * * * *

The siege has now become such a regular business with everyone that there are almost rules and regulations, which, if not promulgated among besieged and besiegers, are, at least, more or less understood things.  Thus, for instance, after one or two in the morning the crashing of rifles around us is always quite stilled; the gunners have long ceased paying us their attentions, and a certain placid calmness comes over all.  The moon may then be aloft in the skies; and if it is, the Tartar Wall stands out clear and black, while the ruined entrenchments about us are flooded in a silver light which makes the sordidness of our surroundings instantly disappear in the enchantment of night.  Our little world is tired; we have all had enough; and even though they may run the risk of being court-martialled, it is always fairly certain that by three or four in the morning half the outposts and the picquets will be dead asleep.  It was not like that in the beginning, for then nobody slept much night or day; and if one did, it was only to awake with a moan, the result of some weird nightmare.