We picked our way on our trembling mounts, trying vainly to push through quickly to escape it all.  But it was no good.  We had stumbled by chance on the actual route taken by an avenging column, and the men who had been mad with lust to loot the Palace, and had been turned off almost as an afterthought to relieve co-religionists, had vented their wrath on everything.  The farther and farther we penetrated the more hideous did the ruins and the corpses become.  There was nothing but silence once again—­death, ruin, and silence; and at last we came on such a mountain of corpses that our ponies suddenly stampeded and went madly careering away.  Frightened more and more by the sound of their galloping hoofs, the animals soon laid their legs to the ground and bolted blindly.  Vainly we tugged at our bridles; vainly we tried every device to bring them to a halt.  But again it was no good.  It had become a sort of mad gallop of death; the animals had to be allowed to rid themselves of their feelings.

Eventually we pulled up far away to the west of where we had started.  We were now near the districts which had only the day before been proclaimed highly dangerous to everyone until clearing operations had swept them clean of lurking Boxers or disbanded soldiery.  But now attracted by a roar of flames, and indifferent to any dangers which might lurk near by, we followed up the trail of smoke hanging on the skies to see what was taking place.  One’s interest never ceased, yet it was only the same thing.  French soldiers, some drunk and some merely savage, had found their way here by some strange fate, and being quite-alone had evidently looted and then set fire to a big pile of buildings.  They were discharging their rifles, too; for as we approached, bullets whistled overhead, and sobbing townspeople, driven from their hiding-places, began rushing away in every direction.  This was strange.

Our arrival was only the signal for a fresh discharge of rifles, and then there was no doubt who was attracting the fire.  The men were deliberately aiming at us to drive us away!  We halted behind cover, and then with the same callousness as they displayed, we gave them a volley back, as a note of warning.  It was my insane companion who drove us to do that; but, forthwith, on the sound of that well-knit discharge, there was more firing on every side, some shots coming from houses quite close to us and some from the open streets.  With the growing roar and crackle of the flames these shots made very insignificant popping and attracted but little attention.  Yet I soon saw that this continuous firing could not come from the rifles of European soldiery, unless there were whole companies of them, and that perhaps we had been mistaken for other people.  And soon my suspicions were confirmed by a confused shouting in the vernacular, and a rush of men from lanes not a hundred yards away.  Then there were some half-suppressed blasts on the hideous Chinese trumpet and—­Chinese soldiery....