You remember the V-shaped barricade garrisoned by Russian sailors, I spoke about a few days ago?  Well, if you do not happen to remember, I merely need say again, that it is a barricade facing both ways on Legation Street, which now in the fulness of time has blossomed into a whole network of barricades which protect our inner lines and the British Legation base from any rush of the enemy which might succeed momentarily in getting past our outworks.  The Russian sailors who furnish these posts have been having a very easy time with nothing to do but to eat and to sleep, and to mount guard, turn and turn about.  Of course, this comparative idleness in all the storm and stress around us gave them time to look around and to loot the vacant houses near them.  Not content with this, some of them discovered that a large number of buxom Chinese schoolgirls from the American missions were lodged but a stone’s throw from their barricades.  The missionaries, fearing that some scandal might occur, had placed some elderly native Christians in charge of the schoolgirls, with the strictest orders to prevent any one from entering their retreat.  This was effective for some time.  One dark night, however, when the usual fusillade along the outer lines began, the sailors made tremendous preparations for an attack which they said was bound to reach them.  At eleven o’clock they developed the threatened attack by emptying a warning rifle or two in the air.  Then warming to their work, and with their dramatic Slav imaginations charmed with the mise en scene, they emptied all their rifles into the air.  Then they started firing volley after volley that crashed horribly in the narrow lanes, retreating the while into the forbidden area.  Fiercely fighting their imaginary foe they fell back slowly; and as soon as the elderly native converts had sufficiently realised the perils to which they were exposed, these cowardly males fled hurriedly through the passageways which have been cut into the British Legation.  The sailors then placed their rifles against a wall and disappeared.  Unfortunately for them a strong guard sent to investigate this unexpected firing almost immediately appeared, and presently the sailors were rescued, some with much scratched faces.  The girls, catlike, had known how to protect themselves!

The next day there was a terrible scene, which everybody soon heard about.  Baron von R——­, the Russian commander, on being acquainted with the facts of the affair, swore that his honour and the honour of Russia demanded that the culprits be shot.  I shall never forget that absurd scene when R——­, who speaks the vilest English, demanded with terrible gestures that the ring-leaders be identified by the victims.  It was pointed out to him that the affair had occurred when all was dark—­that the whole post was implicated—­that it was impossible to name any one man.  Then R——­ swore he would shoot the whole lot of them as a lesson; he would not tolerate such things.  But the very