Meanwhile, the Japanese main-gate fort, at the extreme Japanese east,
with its outlying barricades, is being slowly reached for by the same
means. Two or three times the French, who make connection with the
Japanese lines a hundred feet to the south, have had to send as many
men as they could spare to hold back a sudden rush. Each time the
threatened Chinese charge has not come off, and the incipient attack
has fizzled out to the accompaniment of a diminishing fusillade.

The commanding Italian knoll on the northwest corner of the Su wang-fu
remains firm, but somehow no one has very much confidence in the
Italians, and secondary lines are being formed behind them, towards
which the Italians look with longing eyes. And yet next to the
British Legation posts the Italians are having the easiest time of
all. Lieutenant P----, their commander, is a brave fellow; but he is
brave because he is educated. The uneducated Italian, unlike the
uneducated Frenchman, has little stomach for fighting, and it is easy
to understand in the light of our present experiences why the
Austrians so long dominated Northern Italy, and why unlucky Baratieri
and his men were seized with panic and overwhelmed at Adowa.

Opposite the French and German Legations, Chinese activity is not so
intense as it has been heretofore. Everything in this quarter for
thousands of yards is practically flat with the ground, for
incendiaries have destroyed hundreds and hundreds of houses, and the
Chinese commanders are favouring low-lying barricades, which are hard
to pick out from the enormous mass of partially burned ruins which
encumber the ground. Just as in South Africa we were reading only the
other day, before this plight overtook us, that the hardest thing to
see is a live Boer on the battlefield, so here it is the merest chance