Our little cavalcade was clattering along midst these strange surroundings, when my attention was attracted by the similarity of the occupation which now appeared to be engaging numbers of people on the side streets.  The occupation was plainly a doubtful one, since as soon as we were seen everyone fled indoors.  All had been standing scraping away at the door-posts with any instruments which came handy; and one could hear this scratching and screeching distinctly in the distance as one approached.  It was extraordinary.  Determined to solve this new mystery, on an inspiration I suddenly drove my old pony full tilt up an alleyway before the rest of my men had come in view, and, dashing quickly forward, secured one old man before he could escape.  Once again I understood:  all these people had been scraping off little diamond-shaped pieces of red paper pasted on their door-posts; and on these papers were written a number of characters, which proclaimed the adherence of all the inmates to the tenets of the Boxers.  In their few weeks’ reign, this Chinese sansculottism had succeeded in imposing its will on all.  Everyone was implicated; the whole city had been in their hands; it had been an enormous plot....

Inside the house I had singled out, we found only old women and young boys—­the rest had all fled.  Spread on the ground were pieces of white cloth on which flags were being rudely fashioned—­Japanese, English, French and some others.  They were changing their colours, all these people, as fast as they could—­that is what they were doing; and farther on, as we came to more remote quarters, we found these protecting insignia already flying boldly from every house.  Everybody wished to be friends.  But my men exhorted me to proceed quickly and to escape from these districts, which, they alleged, were still full of Boxers and disbanded soldiery; and yielding to their entreaties, we again dashed onwards quicker and quicker.  For half an hour and more we had, indeed, lost sight of every friendly face.

The succession of streets we passed was endless.  There were nothing but these deserted main thorough-fares, and the scuttling people on the side alleys, and in absolute silence we reached an immense street running due north and south.  To my surprise, although everything was now quite quiet, dead Chinese soldiers lay around here in some numbers.  There were both infantry and cavalry flung headlong on the ground as they had fled.  One big fellow, carrying a banner, had been toppled over, pony and all, as he rode away, and now lay in picturesque confusion, half thrown down the steep slope of the raised driving road, with his tragedy painted clearly as a picture.  In the bright sunshine, with all absolutely quiet and peaceful around, it seemed impossible that these men should have met with a violent death such a short while ago amid a roar of sound.  It was funny, curious, inexplicable....  For my men, however, there were no such thoughts; they climbed off their ponies, and, whipping out knives or bayonets, they slit the bandoliers and pouches from every dead soldier and threw them into the carts.  They had become in this short time good campaigners; you can never have too much ammunition.