In a flash one broad brown back was suddenly splashed with red, a fellow sank on his knees with outstretched arms, and at last rolled over without a moan, apparently as dead as dead could be.  It was brutalising.

The log the men were carrying crashed down heavily on the ground and the two remaining soldiers started back in surprise.  From whence came that shot?  In front of where they were working lay their advanced posts, which, facing our own, two or three hundred feet away, should completely cover them.  They peered around for a few minutes, anxiously searching their front and not looking behind them.  At last they apparently decided that it must have been a stray shot, for, bending down, they once more raised the log, paying no more attention to their dead companion than they would to a dead dog.

This time I let them advance towards their outposts until they were a hundred feet farther away.  Then I fired again.  The log came down once more with a dull thud, and both the men fell as well.  But imagine my disgust when they both rose to their feet, one man merely showing the other a snipped shoulder which must be bleeding, but was evidently nothing as a wound.  I cursed my government rifle, which always throws to the right.  At less than a hundred yards such practice was disgraceful.  This time both the men were aroused, and, abandoning their log, they disappeared round some ruins, only to reappear with their tunics on, their bandoliers strapped round them, and their Mausers in their hands.  They meant to have some revenge.  I lost sight of them for quite ten minutes, only to have them both out again almost halfway between myself and the Japanese posts from which I had sallied forth.  I was cut off!  I would have to wipe those two men out or else they would do that to me.

They were in no hurry, however, for they began by beating the ground carefully and taking advantage of every piece of cover.  They evidently suspected that some of our men had come out in skirmishing order and were still lying hidden; at last one saw something.  He had caught sight of the Japanese sentry who was looking out anxiously to see what had become of me.  So rising hurriedly, the soldier fired at the brown Japanese face.  Before he had sunk on his knees again I had drilled him fair with a snapshot—­in the head it must have been, because he went over with a piercing yell and with his hands plucking at his cap.  The other man did not wait to see what would happen, but fled as fast as he could down a small lane that ran only twenty feet past me.  Seeing the game was played out, I rose and fired rapidly from under the crook of my arm and missed.  Reloading as I scrambled after him, I drove another bullet at him, and he staggered wildly but did not fall.  My blood was now up, and I was determined to get him, even if I had to follow into the Chinese camp, so I sped along too.  The fellow was now yelling lustily, calling his comrades to his aid, and I seemed to be going mad in my excitement.  I fired again as I ran, and must have hit him again, for he reeled still more; then he turned totteringly into a ruined doorway....