rope, he might have lain there bleeding to death. We carried the man
to the carts and decided we would take him to safety. But as we made
preparations to start a warning shout in French bade us not to pass in
front of the pawn-shop gates, and, looking up, I found that several
other French soldiers, together with some Indians and Annamites, had
climbed the roofs of adjacent houses, and with their rifles thrown out
in front of them, were attempting to get a shot at people inside. The
place was evidently securely held and refused to surrender. Grouped
all round, and armed with choppers, bars of iron and long poles, the
crowd of native rapscallions waited in a grim silence for the
_denouement_. It was an extraordinary scene. Everything and everyone
was so silent. I decided to stop and see it through. Such things never
happen twice in a lifetime.

A shot fired from the gate at an incautious man, who darted across the
street, showed that the defenders were both vigilant and desperate,
and knew what to expect at the hands of the foreign soldiery and the
populace once they poured in. Spurred by this sound, the French
soldiers on the roofs pushed down cautiously nearer and nearer to
their prey; but presently, when I thought that they had almost won
their way, a shower of bricks and heavy stones was sent at them by
unseen hands with such savageness and skill that another man was
placed _hors-de-combat,_ and came down groaning with his head split.
His, however, was only a scalp wound, and, discovering that a bandage
left him practically none the worse, he took his place with savage
curses at a corner just beyond the main gate, fixing his bayonet in
grim preparation for the end. Decidedly there would be no quarter when
that end came.

But there appeared to be, nevertheless, no means of bringing about the