Fifty feet past this southern stone bridge you meet the first Russian barricade, with half a dozen tired Russian sailors sleeping on the ground and a sleepy-eyed lookout man leaning on his rifle.  This barricade faces in both directions in the shape of a V, and under its protection this part of Legation Street is supposed to be safe from a rush, if the men stand firm.  In the Russian and American Legations it is everywhere the same story—­barricades and loopholed houses and outworks, now mostly crowned with sandbags, succeed one another with a regularity which becomes monotonous.  But on this western side the bullets are few and far between as yet, and sometimes for a few seconds a curious quiet reigns, only broken by the distant and muffled hum of sound and crackling towards the east.  Decidedly up to date it is the Japanese and the French and their companions who have all the honours in the matter of cannonading and fusillading, and the Germans are soon going to be not far behind them.  Right up on the Tartar Wall I found the American marines once again lying mutinously silent.  They, too, do not like it, frankly and unreservedly; and as I lay up there and told them what I had seen elsewhere, an old fellow with a beard said it was S——­, the first secretary, who had insisted on their stopping, and had almost had a fight with everyone about it.  The old marine told me that the other men would be damned—­he used the word in a wistful sort of way which had nothing profane about it—­if they stopped much longer.  They wanted other people to share the honours; they did not see why every man should not have a turn at the same duty....  I was glad these Americans were making this fuss, for everything is just as unbalanced as it was at the beginning, and there is no sort of confidence anywhere.  After three days of siege the only clear thing I can see is that there are a lot of bad tempers, and that the few good men are saving the situation by acting independently to the best of their ability and are not trying to understand anything else.

Much depressed, I at last slipped down through the back of the Russian Legation into the British Legation.  Yes! the others are right, for on reaching the English grounds you feel unconsciously that you have passed from the fighting line to the hospital and commissariat base.  Here, mixed impartially with the women, crowds of vigorous men, belonging to the junior ranks of the Legations’ staffs and to numbers of other institutions, are skulking, or getting themselves placed on committees so as to escape duty.  I suppose you could beat up a hundred, or even a hundred and fifty, rifle-bearing effectives in an hour.  Many of the younger men were furious, and said they were quite willing to do anything, but that everybody should be turned out....  In the afternoon some of them fell in with my idea—­volunteering under independent command on the outer lines—­and now the Japanese, the French and the Germans have got more men.  But what I wish to show you in this rambling account is the unbalanced condition.  Except in two or three places we can be rushed in ten minutes.