The general advance, which had been from the outer city, as soon as the news had been brought through that a way to the Legations had been opened, had thrown the various units into an immense confusion.  Infantry, cavalry, artillery, and the fighting trains, were all mixed in a terrible tangle.  Some had come forward so rapidly, in their eagerness not to be left out of it all, that they had passed in under the walls as soon as the gates had been burst open, and had now got jammed into our narrow streets and were unable to move.  Just under the ramp of the Tartar Wall I came on some Indian cavalry—­about thirty or forty troopers covered with mud and dirt, and led by a single British officer.  As soon as the latter caught sight of me, he shouted an angry question as to what all this firing meant, and how in h——­ he could get out of this into the open....  He rained his questions at me like the others had done, never waiting for an answer.  The firing, in all truth, had increased enormously, and now rang out with a most tremendous roar.  It always came from over there to the northwest, round about the Palace entrances.  Evidently Chinese troops were holding all the Palace gates in great force, and for some reason wished to keep the relief columns at bay at all costs until nightfall.  I yelled something of this to my disconsolate cavalry officer, and suggested that he should follow me up the wall and see for himself.  I knew nothing.  “Cavalry can’t climb a wall,” he furiously replied as I rushed up above, and as I climbed higher that voice followed me in gusts which became fainter and fainter, “Cavalry can’t climb a wall! cavalry can’t climb a wall!” Then the road blotted him and his voice completely out and a swelling scene was before me.

For up there I soon understood.  A mass of Indian infantry, with some machine-guns, had established themselves for hundreds of yards along this commanding height, among the old Chinese barricades, and were now firing as fast as they could down into the distant Palace enclosures.  Overhead bullets were passing in continuous streams, and crouching low in an angle of the buttresses lay a number of wounded men.  Of the enemy, however, there was no sign to be seen; that he was firing back more and more quickly and desperately was certain.  All these bullets....

As I stood and looked, suddenly the horrid bark of the modern high-velocity field-gun began down below in our lines, and the word passed along that a British battery had succeeded in getting through the jam, and was opening on the enemy from just outside the Legations.  The barking went on very rapidly for a few minutes, and then ceased as suddenly as it had begun.  The cause was not long to seek; an infantry advance had followed, for without any warning swarms of Chinese riflemen began running out from the nests of ruined Chinese houses a few hundred yards to the rear of our old lines.  They came out in rapid rushes just as flights of startled sparrows dart over