In this wise has our siege commenced; with all the men angry and discontented; with no responsible head; with the one man among those high-placed dead; with hundreds of converts crowding us at every turn—­in a word, with everything just the natural outcome of the vacillation and ignorance displayed during the past weeks by those who should have been the leaders.  Fortunately, as I have already said, so far there has been no fighting or no firing worth speaking of.  Only along the French and Italian barricades, facing east and north, a dropping fire has continued since yesterday, and one Frenchman has been shot through the head and one Austrian wounded.  It is worth while noting, now that I think of it, that the French, the Italians, the Germans, and, of course, the Austrians, have accepted Captain T——­, the cruiser captain, as their commander-in-chief, and that the Japanese have signified their willingness to do so, too, as soon as the British and Americans do likewise.  Thus already there are signs that a pretty storm is brewing over this question of a responsible commander; and, of course, so long as things remain as they are at present, there can be no question of an adequate defence.  Each detachment is acting independently and swearing at all the others, excepting the French and Austrians, for the good reason that as the Austrians have taken refuge in the French lines they must remain polite.  Half the officers are also at loggerheads; volunteers have been roaming about at will and sniping at anything they have happened to see moving in the distance; ammunition is being wasted; there are great gaps in our defences, which any resolute foe could rush in five minutes were they so inclined; there is not a single accurate map of the area we have to defend!

All this I discovered in the course of the morning, and by afternoon I had nothing better to do than go over to the great Su wang-fu, or Prince Su’s palace grounds, now filled with Chinese refugees, both Catholic and Protestant, and there watch the Japanese at work.  The Japanese Legation is squashed in between Prince Su’s palace grounds and buildings and the French Legation lines, and, consequently, to be on the outer rim of our defences the little Japanese have been shifted north and now hold the northeast side of our quadrilateral.  Prince Su, together with his various wives and concubines and their eunuchs, has days ago fled inside the Imperial city, abandoning this palace with its valuables to the tender mercies of the first comers; and thus the Japanese sailor detachment, reinforced by a couple of dozen Japanese and other volunteers, has made itself free with everything, and is holding an immense line of high walls, requiring at least five hundred men to be made tolerably safe.  But they have an extraordinary little fellow in command, Colonel S——­, the military attache.  He is awkward and stiff-legged, as are most Japanese, but he is very much in earnest, and already understands