During the lulls which occur between the attacks, when the Chinese soldiery are probably coolly refreshing themselves with tea and pipes and hauling away those who have succumbed, we hear from the north of the city the same dull booming of big guns, continuous, relentless, and never-tiring.  It is the sound of the Chinese artillery ranged against the great fortified Roman Catholic Cathedral.  When we have a few moments we can well picture to ourselves this valiant Bishop F——­, with cross in hand, like some old-time warrior-priest, pointing to the enemy, and urging his spear-armed flocks to stand firm along the outer rim.  We can also see, in the smoke and dust, the thin fringe of sailors who must be forming the mainstay of the defence.  Perhaps, sprinkled along the compound walls, with harsh-speaking rifles in their hands, they are a sort of human incense, exorcising by their mere presence the devils in pagan hearts....

Scant time for thoughts; none for recording, as each hour shows more clearly what we may expect.  Scarcely has the fire been stilled in one quarter than it breaks out with even greater violence in another, and we are hurried in small reinforcements from point to point.  And from the positions on the Tartar Wall, which are now also dusted by a continually growing fire that would sweep our men off in a cloud of sandbags and brick-chips, the enemy’s attacks can be best understood.  The growing number of rifles being brought to bear on us; the violence and increasing audacity; the building of new barricades that press closer and closer to our own, and are now so near that they almost crush in our chests—­are all clear from the reports sent down.  The relief columns on the Tientsin road are driving in unwieldy Chinese forces on top of us, and this native soldiery is falling back on the capital to be remarshalled after a fashion—­placed on the city walls or flung against us in a despairing attempt to kill us all, and remove the Thing which is making the relieving columns advance so quickly.  Crazy with fear, and with ghosts of the chastisement of 1860 etched on every column of dust raised by their retreating soldiery, the Chinese Government is acting like one possessed.

To-day I saw it all beautifully, with the aid of the best glasses we have got.  First came bodies of infantry trotting hurriedly in their sandals and glancing about them.  In the dust and the distance they seemed to have lost all formation—­to be mere broken fragments.  But once a man stopped, looked up at us, a mere dot in the ruined streets hundreds and hundreds of yards away, and then savagely discharged his rifle at us.  He knew we were on the Tartar Wall, and so sent his impotent curses at us through a three-foot steel tube....  Behind such men were long country carts laden with wounded and broken men, and driven by savage-looking drivers, powdered with our cursed dust and driving standing up with voice and whip alone.  The teams of ponies