“Volunteers to the front,” shouted somebody.  Everybody sprang forward like one man.  A French squad was already fixing bayonets noisily and excusing their rattle and cursing on account of the dark; the Austrians had deployed and were already advancing. "Pas de charge," called a French middy.  Somebody started tootling a bugle, and helter-skelter we were off down the street, with fixed bayonets and loaded magazines, a veritable massacre for ourselves in the dark....

The charge blew itself out in less than four hundred yards, and we pulled up panting, swearing and laughing.  Somebody had stuck some one else through the seat of the trousers, and the some one else was making a horrid noise about this trivial detail.  Some rifles had also gone off by themselves, how, why and at whom no one would explain.  A very fine night counter-attack we were, and the rear was the safest place.  Yet that run did us good.  It was like a good drink of strong wine.

But we had now reached the first torches and understood why they remained stationary.  The Boxers, met by the Austrian machine-gun, had stuck them in long lines along the edge of the raised driving road, and had then sneaked back quietly in the dark.  Every minute we expected to have our progress checked by the dead bodies of those we had slain, but not a corpse could you see.  The Austrian commander was now once again holding a council of war, and this time he urged a prompt retreat.  We had certainly lost touch with our own lines, and for all we knew we might suddenly be greeted with a volley from our own people coming out to reinforce us.  Our commanders wobbled this way and that for a few minutes, but then, goaded by the general desire, we pushed forward again, with a common movement, without orders this time.  We moved more slowly, firing heavily at every shadow along the sides of the road.  Here it seemed more black than ever, for the spluttering torches, which cast a dim light on the raised road itself, left the neighbouring houses in an impenetrable gloom.  Whole battalions of Boxers could have lurked there unmarked by us; perhaps they were only waiting until they could safely cut us off.  It was very uncanny.

In front of us the flames of the burning Roman Catholic Cathedral rose higher and higher, and the shouts and roars, becoming ever fiercer and fiercer, could be plainly heard.  Just then a Frenchman stumbled with a muttered oath, and, bending down, jumped back with a cry of alarm.  At his feet lay a native woman trussed tightly with ropes, with her body already half-charred and reeking with kerosene, but still alive and moaning faintly.  The Boxers, inhuman brutes, had caught her, set fire to her, and then flung her on the road to light their way.  She was the first victim of their rage we had as yet come across.  That made us feel like savages.  We were now not more than three hundred yards from the cathedral, and in the light of the flames, which were now burning