us—­to escape through the gate.  As it passed, we clubbed and bayonetted him with neatness, for we have now some art in close-quarter work, and with a last howl the animal’s life flickered out.  Dogs are highly dangerous, as we knew to our cost; they give the alarm in a way which no living man, even in these civilised days, can fail to understand.  We waited in some anguish to see whether this scuffle had been heard; we were a quarter of a mile away from our own lines by the circuitous route we had been forced to take, and if we were ambuscaded, no one would probably go back to tell the tale....

Still not a sound, not a word.  A little encouraged, we crept more valiantly into the Austrian Legation, and stood amazed at the spectacle.  Rank-growing weeds covered the ground two or three feet high; all the houses and residences had been gutted by fire, everything combustible burned, leaving a terrible litter.  But the brickwork and stonework stood almost intact, and the tall Corinthian pillars with which it had been the architect’s fancy to adorn this mission of His Most Catholic Majesty, stood up white and chaste in all this scene of devastation and ruin; they might have dated from centuries ago.  Broken weapons, thousands more of brass cartridges, and sometimes even a soldier’s bloodstained tunic could be seen among the weeds.  This must have been the site of another camp of Chinese soldiery.  Abandoned straw matting showed where rough huts had once been built line upon line.  But all these hosts had flown.

We now held a council of war.  What should we do—­push on or go back?  It seemed highly dangerous, but suddenly making up my mind, I cut short all deliberations and ordered an advance.  To feel for the enemy, to get in touch with the enemy at all costs, and to scratch him if possible, is evidently the scout’s duty, even when the scout is but a siege amateur, with broken trousers, a mud-stained shirt and a battered rifle.  But we must make ourselves secure.  We bolted the big gates behind us; we sweatily piled up sufficient bricks to make its opening a matter of minutes for an enemy’s hand, and then we once again trotted forward.  This time we were irrevocably inside the Legation, and separated, perhaps, for good and all from our own people....

We rapidly covered the ground until we reached the extreme eastern corner of the vast enclosing Legation wall.  Very recently there had been some one just here for a fire was still smouldering on the ground, and in some earthenware bowls there was some cold rice.  We must see what was beyond....

The big recruit lent me his broad shoulder, and with some struggling I caught the edge of an outhouse roof and hitched myself astride of the main wall.  Still nothing to be seen except ruined and battered houses; again not a soul, not a dog, not a vestige of life.  The others came up, too, and we rapidly improvised a ladder to get down the other side and back again if necessary.