while the populace was still so terror-stricken.  To our further surprise, on coming up we found that a number of marauders and stragglers belonging to a variety of European corps had been halted by this sight; and as we drew nearer we found a private of the French Infanterie Coloniale groaning on the ground, with a ghastly wound in his leg.  No one was attending to him—­they were too busy with their own business, and had we not tied him roughly with some cloth and rope, he might have lain there bleeding to death.  We carried the man to the carts and decided we would take him to safety.  But as we made preparations to start a warning shout in French bade us not to pass in front of the pawn-shop gates, and, looking up, I found that several other French soldiers, together with some Indians and Annamites, had climbed the roofs of adjacent houses, and with their rifles thrown out in front of them, were attempting to get a shot at people inside.  The place was evidently securely held and refused to surrender.  Grouped all round, and armed with choppers, bars of iron and long poles, the crowd of native rapscallions waited in a grim silence for the denouement.  It was an extraordinary scene.  Everything and everyone was so silent.  I decided to stop and see it through.  Such things never happen twice in a lifetime.

A shot fired from the gate at an incautious man, who darted across the street, showed that the defenders were both vigilant and desperate, and knew what to expect at the hands of the foreign soldiery and the populace once they poured in.  Spurred by this sound, the French soldiers on the roofs pushed down cautiously nearer and nearer to their prey; but presently, when I thought that they had almost won their way, a shower of bricks and heavy stones was sent at them by unseen hands with such savageness and skill that another man was placed hors-de-combat, and came down groaning with his head split.  His, however, was only a scalp wound, and, discovering that a bandage left him practically none the worse, he took his place with savage curses at a corner just beyond the main gate, fixing his bayonet in grim preparation for the end.  Decidedly there would be no quarter when that end came.

But there appeared to be, nevertheless, no means of bringing about the desired climax.  The defenders showed their alertness by occasional shots that grated harshly on the still air, and the attack could make no progress.  I wondered what would happen.  Yet it did not last long, for Providence was at work.  Two Cossacks came cantering along the street, bearing some message from a Russian command; and although warning shouts were sent at them, too, as they approached, they paid no heed, but rode carelessly by.  As they came abreast of the main gate a sudden volley, which made their mounts swerve so badly that less adept horsemen would have been flung heavily to the ground, greeted them and sent them careering wildly for a few yards.  But here were men who understood this kind of warfare.  First, it is true, they were a little angry as they pulled up, unslung their carbines and shot home cartridges as if they would act like the rest....  But then, when they saw how things were, they grinned in some delight, and finally dismounting and driving their beasts with shouts off the road, they prepared to join the fray.  With renewed interest I watched them go to work.