In a very short time, indeed, a suitable reply had been written briefly in Chinese on another board, but the finding of a messenger was more difficult.  We must send a proper man.  A chinaman was at length discovered, who, after having been invested with the customary official hat and the long official coat, was persuaded to advance towards the bridge bearing our message and piteously waving a white flag to show that he likewise was a harbinger of peace.  The man progressed but slowly towards the Imperial bridge, and twice he gave unmistakable signs of wishing to bolt; but urged on by cries and a frantic waving, he at last reached the parapet on which leaned our enemy’s placard.  Then depositing our own reply, his courage left him completely, and he incontinently bolted for our lines as hard as he could run, casting his dignity to the winds.  In his haste he had set his board all askew, and the enemy could not possibly have understood it.  But no arguments could induce our messenger to return.  He swore, indeed, that he had just escaped in time, as the enemy’s rifles were all pointed towards him from a number of positions just beneath the Imperial city wall, which we could not see from our lines.  So nothing more was done by our headquarters, and an hour passed away with all the world waiting, but with no Imperial despatch brought to us.

The sun was now down only six inches above the pink walls—­in another hour it would be dark and our position would be exactly the same as before.  On all sides our fighting line had clambered over their barricades and were examining the enemy’s silent ones with curiosity.  Beyond the fortified Hanlin courtyards, to the north of the British Legation courtyards, which had been occupied and heavily sandbagged after the big fires there, so as to keep the enemy at a safe distance—­the mass of ruins were indeed as silent and as deserted as a graveyard.  Cautiously escalading walls and pushing down narrow alleyways, some of us advanced several hundred yards to see what was happening beyond; and presently, standing on the top of an unbroken wall line, there were the Palace gates and the mysterious pink walls almost within a stone’s throw of us.  The sun had moved still farther west, and its slanting rays now struck the Imperial city, under whose orders we had been so lustily bombarded, with a wonderful light.  Just outside the Palace gates were crowds of Manchu and Chinese soldiery—­infantry, cavalry, and gunners grouped all together in one vast mass of colour.  Never in my life have I seen such a wonderful panorama—­such a brilliant blaze in such rude and barbaric surroundings.  There were jackets and tunics of every colour; trouserings of blood red embroidered with black dragons; great two-handed swords in some hands; men armed with bows and arrows mixing with Tung Fu-hsian’s Kansu horsemen, who had the most modern carbines slung across their backs.  There were blue banners, yellow banners embroidered with black, white and red flags, both triangular