Without any warning two men came round the corner, peering everywhere with sharp eyes and bobbing up and down.  Simultaneously with the sob of surprise they gave our rifles crashed off.  And this time, owing to the short range and the Japanese warning, we got them fair and square, and both of them rolled over.  But no, one fellow jumped to his feet again, and before we could stop him was down another lane like a flash of lighting.  We promptly gave chase, yelling blue murder in an incautious manner, which might have brought hundreds of the enemy on our heels.  But we did not care.  Round a corner, as we followed the man up, a high wall rose sheer, but nothing daunted, the fellow took a tremendous leap, and by the aid of the lattice-work on a window, climbed to a roof.  Then bang, bang, bang, seven shots went at him rapidly, one after another.  In spite of the volley the man still crawled upwards, but as he reached the top of the low house and passed his legs over he gave a feeble moan and then.... flopper-ti flop, flopper-ti flop, he crashed down the other side and ended with a dull thud on the ground.  On the other side there he was dead as a door-nail and all covered with blood.  It was our first proper work.  But he was not a soldier, he was a Boxer; and in place of the former incomplete attire of red sashes and strings, this true patriot wore a long red tunic edged with blue, and had his head tied up in the regulation bonnet rouge of the French Revolution.  Round his waist he had also girded on a blue cartridge-belt of cloth, with great thick Martini bullets jammed into the thumb holes.  This we thought very curious at the time, as the Boxers were supposed to laugh at firearms.  Elated by this little affair, we pushed on, and came upon other men working round our lines in small bands, and exchanged shots with them.  All were Boxers in this new uniform; but although we tried to entice them on and corner them in houses, they were too cunning for us, and broke back each time.  In the end we had so stirred up this hornet’s nest that the scattered firing became more and more persistent, and stern orders came for us to fall back.

We came in feeling elated, but Colonel S——­ was looking serious, for he had discovered that the extent of Prince Su’s outer walls, which have to be held in their entirety, is so much greater than was expected, and every part can be so easily attacked from the outside, that the task is desperate.  There are less than fifty men in all for these long Japanese lines, and if we take more from elsewhere it will be merely creating fresh gaps....  Decidedly it is not enticing.  The whole line from the north right round to the south, where the Japanese, French, Austrians, Italians and Germans are distributed, ending on the Tartar Wall itself, is terribly weak.  And as I began to understand this, an hour after this afternoon adventure I became quite gloomy at the outlook.