our lines was a droll sight. The Chinese riflemen, being on a slightly
lower level and forced to fire upwards at the Japanese positions,
caused many of their bullets to skim the sandbagged crest and strike
the line of roofs behind. Many, I say; I should have said thousands
and tens of thousands, for the roofs seemed alive and palpitating with
strange feelings; and extraordinary as it may sound, big holes were
soon eaten into the heavily tiled roofs by this simple rifle
fusillade. It seemed as if the Chinese hoped to destroy us and our
defences by this novel method. But there was a more ominous sign than
this. A Japanese sailor perched high up aloft on a roof five hundred
feet inside these advance positions and armed with a telescope, had
seen two guns being dragged forward. In a few hours at the most, even
allowing for Chinese sloth and indifference as to time, the guns would
be in position, and then the outer wall would be demolished, and
possibly a disordered retirement would be the result. So the little
Japanese colonel took the bull by the horns. Setting all the coolies
he could muster from among the converts, he quickly formed a second
line of defence by loopholing and sandbagging all the chess-board
squares that flank the northern wall. When night came the advanced
positions were quietly abandoned, and as soon as the Chinese scouts,
who always creep forward at daybreak, discovered that our men had
flown, their leaders ordered a charge. A confused mass rushed forward,
penetrated one of the courtyards, and finding it apparently deserted,
incautiously pushed into the next square. Before they could fly, a
murderous fire caught them on three sides and wiped out several dozens
of them, the rifles and ammunition being taken by our men and the
corpses thrown outside. This has apparently had a chilling effect on
the policy of open charges in this quarter, and now the Chinese
commanders are advancing their lines by means of ingenious parallels
and zig-zag barricades, which will take some time to construct.