he was all right.  Telling him to join us, we marched on.  We progressed another fifty yards, and then there was a scuffle.  I looked round, and our Catholic had disappeared.  Were we trapped?  Just as I was calling out, he reappeared; this time he was bearing a rifle and a bandolier.  This was disconcerting.  “I saw the man,” he began calmly, “and with my hands I killed him by pulling on the throat—­thus.”  He made a horrid pantomime with his hands.  Behind a wall we found the red and black tunic of a Chinese soldier, the sash and the boots, but of a corpse there was no sign.  I was glad I understood.  “What do you mean by deceiving me?” I sternly asked the carter.  “These are yours, and it was you who were fighting against us.”  The man fell on his knees, and confessed then and there without subterfuge.  He had been captured, he said and imprisoned weeks ago by a Chinese commander, who had threatened to break the bones of his legs unless he enlisted against us.  So he had joined and had been fighting for a month.  Last night, as soon as the big guns had been heard, he deserted, and had lain where we found him for fifteen hours, waiting for our advances, and may his legs be broken if he lied.  I paused in doubt for a minute; then I made up my mind—­we let him follow!  The odds were in any case against him.

As we moved stealthily forward we came on more and more fortifications.  A formidable blockhouse had been constructed by dragging out big steel safes, looted from the various European offices in this abandoned area, and building them into a thick half-moon of stone and brick, making a shell-proof defence.  On the ground brass cartridge-cases and broken straps and weapons were littered more and more thickly, but of any sign of life there was absolutely none.  Absolute stillness reigned around us.  We might have been in a city abandoned for dozens of years....

Past this blockhouse we crept more and more cautiously, beating the ground thoroughly, and wasting many minutes to make sure that no riflemen lurked in the ruins which covered the ground.  Our new recruit had shown us how easily we could be trapped.  Loopholes squinted at us from countless low-lying barricades roughly made by heaping bricks and charred timbers together.  They had feared our sorties evidently as much as we had their rushes, had these Chinese soldiers.  Their fortified lines were hundreds of feet deep.

We were now down near the abandoned Austrian Legation, and, rapidly trotting forward in Indian file under cover of the high encircling wall, we at last reached the main entrance.  This was debatable ground.  I looked round the corner with one cautious eye, and even as I did so, a shadow rushed along the ground....  Instantly I snapped off my rifle from my hip, the others followed suit, and a howl of canine rage answered us.  We had rolled over a wolfish dog searching for dead bodies.  Before we had time to realise much, the savage animal was up again and rushing at