The roar increased in vigour, and then hundreds of torches, dancing like will-o’-the-wisps in front of our straining eyes, appeared far down the Wang-ta, or so-called Customs Street, which separates Sir R——­ H——­’s Inspectorate from the Austrian Legation.  They were less than a thousand yards away.  The Boxers, casting discretion to the winds, appeared to be once more advancing on the Legations.  But then came a shout from the Austrian Legation, some hoarse cries in guttural German, and the big gates of the Legation were thrown open near us.  The night was inky black, and you could see nothing.  A confused banging of feet followed, then some more orders, and with a rattling of gun-wheels a machine-gun was run out and planted in the very centre of the street.

“At two thousand yards,” sang out the naval lieutenant unexpectedly and jarringly as we stood watching, “slow fire.”

I was surprised at such decision. Tang, tang, tang, tang, tang, spat the machine-gun in the black night, now rasping out bullets at the rate of three hundred a minute, as the gunner under the excitement of the hour and his surroundings forgot his instructions, now steadying to a slow second fire.  This was something like a counter-excitement; we were beginning to speak at last.  We were delighted.  It was not so much the gun reports which thrilled us as the resonant echoes which, crackling like very dry fagots in a fierce fire as the bullets sped down the long, straight street, made us realise their destroying power.  Have you ever heard a high-velocity machine-gun firing down deserted and gloomy thorough-fares?  It crackles all over your body in electrical shocks as powerful as those of a galvanic battery; it stimulates the brain as nothing else can do; it is extraordinary.

The will-o’-the-wisp torches had stopped dancing forward now, but still they remained there, quite inexplicable in their fixity.  We imagined that our five minutes’ bombardment must have carried death and destruction to everyone and everything.  And yet what did this mean?  The flames, which had been licking round near the cathedral, suddenly burst up in a great pillar of fire.  That was the answer; the cathedral was at last alight.  At this we all gave a howl of rage, for we knew what that meant.  The picquets had been mysteriously reinforced by Frenchmen, Englishmen, and men of half a dozen other nationalities, all chattering together in all the languages of Europe. “Que faire, que faire,” somebody kept bawling.  “Get your damned gun out of the way,” shouted other angry voices, “and let us charge the beggars.”  But Captain T——­, the Austrian commander, was already conferring with a dear colleague whom he had discovered in the dark.  Even in this storm of excitement the protocol could not be forgotten.  Marines, sailors, and Legation juniors groaned; was this opportunity to be missed?  At last they arranged it; it should be a charge of volunteers.