sailors exchange shots with the enemy. Half a dozen men have been
already hit here, but in spite of the strictest orders men are
fearlessly exposing themselves and reaping the inevitable result. It
is only at the beginning that one is so unwise. One giant Austrian had
spread himself across the top of a roof near which I passed, with two
sandbags to protect his head, and looked in his blue-black sailors
clothes like an enormous fly squashed flat up there by the anger of
the gods. Now leaning this way, now that, he flashed off a Mannlicher
there towards the Italian Legation, where only one hundred hours ago
no one ever dreamed that Chinese desperadoes would have made our
normal life such a distant memory.

As I came up the French commander allowed the remark to drop that the
position did not please him--_ca ne me dit rien_ is the exact
expression he used--and that his defence was too thin to be capable of
resisting a single determined rush. The abandoned Italian barricade,
with the Italian Legation still smouldering behind it, is indeed now
filling up with more and more Chinese sharpshooters, who continually
pour in a hot fire only fifty feet from the French lines. Occasionally
a reckless Chinese brave dashes across from the hiding-place he has
selected to cover his advance into the nest of Chinese houses which
are only separated by a twenty-foot lane from the French Legation
wall, and coolly applies the torch. Then puff; first there is a small
cloud of smoke, then a volley of crackling wood, and finally flames
leaping skyward. You can see this here at all hours. Aided by fire and
rifle-shots the Chinese are pushing nearer and nearer the French. It
is clear that they will have a worse time than the Japanese if the
situation develops as quietly but as rapidly as it has been doing....

Across Legation Street connection with the Germans is now had by means