When everything was ready, we stood for a minute massed together while some parting instructions were given.  We presented a curious and unique spectacle.  There were fifteen Japanese sailors in the dirty remains of their blue uniforms, without caps or jumpers, with broken boots and begrimed faces; and alongside of them were twenty-five miscellaneous volunteers, some with bayonets to their rifles, some with none—­but all determined to get home on the enemy at all costs this time.  There had been sixteen days’ incessant work at the trenches and barricades with next to no sleep.  Mud and brickwork clung to us all with an insistence which no amount of rough dusting would remove.  We were a tattered and disreputable crowd.

There was little time to reflect or to cast one’s eyes around, however, for no sooner had Captain A——­ received his last instructions than his bugler sounded the charge, and from the Italian lines, eight hundred feet away, which were hidden from us by walls and trees, came an answering blast.  The Italians were ready.  I gripped my rifle and took the flank of my detachment.

We tumbled forward in silence, forty effectives in all, with a couple dozen native converts behind us, who had been provided with some of the captured rifles and swords.  As soon as we were clear, Captain A——­, who was a tiny man, even among a tiny race, drew a little sword, and pointing to the enemy’s barricades now looming up very close, ordered his bugler to sound the charge once more.  The notes ripped out, and giving a mixed attempt at a European cheer, we quickened our pace, running as rapidly as we could over the rubbish which covered the ground and taking advantage of every piece of cover.  A few stray shots pecked at us, but in this quarter, so strange that it appeared unreal, the enemy gave hardly a sign of life.  Behind us, on our left, a tremendous fusillade was in progress, and the cracking of the rifles came back to us in one high-pitched roar.  But the intervening trees and the ruins did not allow us to see or understand what was the cause.  We had completely lost touch with the others.

Rushing round a corner, we suddenly came on the gun we had been sent to capture; it was perched high on a long, loopholed barricade, and stood quite silent and alone.  We gave a shout and pitched forward in a momentary ecstasy of delight, but like a flash the scene around us changed.  Dozens of soldiers jumped up around us, looking every bit like startled pheasants in their bright uniforms, and retired, firing rapidly.  This, as if a preconcerted plan, was the signal for a tremendous fire on all sides, which absolutely surprised us.  From every adjacent ruin and roof the enemy appeared by magic, and fired at us with ever-increasing vigour.  Now just above us the selfsame gun which had demolished my outpost house a few days before loomed invitingly, and determined to have our revenge and stick the gunners like pigs if we could only get to grips, a knot of us ran on.