We were busily at work completing these preparations when suddenly the big recruit grabbed me unceremoniously by the shoulder and uttered a single word in a hoarse tone of excitement.  “Look,” he said; “look!” I looked, and far down the street below us towards where lay the Palace and the Imperial city, I saw a figure rapidly moving.  A pair of binoculars were pulled out and brought to bear.  It was a Chinese soldier!

We flattened ourselves on the top of the wall like so many crawling snails, pushed out our rifles in front of us, and at four hundred yards we most foolishly opened on the man.  By instinct and experience, we had all learned much in two months; yet in a moment of excitement everything was being rapidly unlearned....

It takes some shooting to get home on a flickering figure, dodging along a street with irregular lines, at that range, and I confess we drew no blood.  But still loophole shooting must spoil open-air work, otherwise at that range....  The man had paused irresolutely as the stream of bullets had hissed past him, and had then run violently into a doorway.  Presently, as we intently watched, his head emerged, then his whole body; and, finally dodging quickly in and out, he gained a cross-road and disappeared.  What did this mean?

It did not take long to learn, for just as we had finished swearing at our ill luck, other figures began to appear in the same direction, and as they ran we could see that they were throwing down their things.  It seemed plain now; these must be deserters slipping out of the Imperial city and the Palace enclosures and fleeing rapidly to escape some fate.  Something must have certainly happened somewhere, although there was still nothing to be heard, except perhaps a distant movement in the air, which might mean the rattle of musketry.  Sometimes we could hear that faint suggestion of sound, sometimes we could not; it was impossible to say what it was.

Running gives Dutch courage, so we dropped from our wall, and we, too, began running—­towards the deserters.  Most foolish scouts were we becoming.  The first band of fugitives saw us and bolted to the north, one man loosing off his rifle at us as he ran, and his bullet making an ugly swish in the air just above our heads.  It was that Chinese hip-shot which is practised with jingal and matchlock in the native hunting, and which these Northern Chinese can with difficulty unlearn.  As that swish reached us we pressed forward even more eagerly, and soon had debouched once more on the long Customs Street—­this time many hundreds of yards higher up than we had ever been before.  Flattening ourselves on the ground, and barricading our heads with bricks, we waited in silence for more of the enemy to appear.  We were now admirably and safely posted.