Yesterday I had great luck, for I got three men within very few minutes of one another; and then when I was fondly imagining that I might pick off dozens more from my coign of vantage, I was swept back into our lines under such a storm of fire as I have never experienced before.  I should tell you that there are practically only two shooting-grounds where this curious sport may be had; there are only two areas of brick and ruins where by judicious manoeuvring you may steal out and get the enemy on his exposed flank where no barricades protect him from an enfilading fire.  These two areas lie opposite the Russian front, and beyond the extreme Japanese western posts of the Su wang-fu.  Since the Russian front is the Russian commander’s own preserve, it is from the Japanese posts that I work.

On the day when I made my record bag, half-past eleven found everybody drowsy and the time propitious.  Our northern Peking sun beats down pitilessly from the cloudless skies at such a time, and so I had the field completely to myself.  Firing had ceased absolutely on all sides, and the Chinese had begun to sleep.  Crouching low down I scurried across from the Japanese post to some ruins fifty feet off, and remained quietly squatting there, panting in the heat, to get myself bearings.  Around me all was silent, and thirty or forty yards from where I lay I could see the brown face of the Japanese sailor laughing at me through a loophole.  Presently bringing my glasses into play I swept the huge pile of ruined houses and streets lying huddled on all sides.

There was not a twig stirring or a shadow moving.  All was dead quiet.  The main Chinese camp on this side was placed in H——­’s abandoned compounds—­that we had discovered long ago—­but the battalions there were now apparently asleep with not so much as a sentry out.  So, gaining confidence, I pushed on, working parallel to Prince Su’s outer walls and about fifty feet beyond them.  Suddenly I stopped and dropped, quite by instinct, for although my mind had telegraphed the danger to my knees, I did not fully realise what it was until I was on the ground.  Just round the corner there was a glimpse of three men stripped to the waist to be seen.  Had they seen me?  I waited in some suspense for a few seconds pressed my glasses back into their case, and gripped my rifle.  My anxiety was soon set at rest, for with a clatter, which seemed ten times greater than it really was, the men set quickly to work on a structure.  They were building something, and now was my chance.  Getting to the corner again I peered cautiously around, and there but seventy or eighty feet from where I lay three strapping fellows were raising a heavy log.  They had pulled off their red and black tunics, and were only in their baggy breeches and the curious little stomach apron the Northern Chinaman affects to keep himself from catching cold.

Their brown backs glistened with sweat in the bright sunshine, and between their belts and the loose black turbans, under which their pigtails were gathered up, an ideal two-feet target presented itself.  Carefully I fired.