Chapter VIII: Part II: The Siege (3)

The Chinese artillery practice, although poor, the guns and shells being hopelessly ancient, had become so annoying and so distressing that it was determined to adopt a policy of reprisals, taking the form of sorties, and by bayonetting the gunners and damaging the guns if we could not drag them off, to induce the enemy to make his offensive less galling. The ball was opened by an attack which was miserably conducted on the selfsame gun that had so harshly treated that little post I have described a few days before. On the 1st of the month, Lieutenant P----, the commander of the Italian hillock, laid a plan of sortie before headquarters to which consent was given. Supported by British marines and volunteers, the Italians were to make a sortie in force from their position and seize the gun. The Japanese were to co-operate from their barricades and trenches by opening a heavy fire, and moving slowly forward in extended order as soon as the Italian charge had commenced. All the morning the Italians were noisily preparing, and as soon as their attack was delivered, it justified all we had already thought about them. They issued from their lines with a wild rush, but no sooner did the Chinese fire strike them than they broke and fled, losing several killed and wounded, and fighting like madmen to escape through a passageway which led back. P---- was very severely wounded in the arm, and had to give up his command, and the bodies of the Italians killed were never recovered. A section of the British Legation students, who had gone forward with the Italians, had a man badly wounded, and the sight of this young fellow staggering back with his clothes literally dripping with blood gave the British Legation inmates a start it took some time to recover from. Later, it turned out that P----'s sortie plan was based on a faulty map; that the whole command found itself being fired on from a dozen quarters before fifty yards had been covered; and that there were nothing but impossible walls and barricades. But still this does not excuse the fact that while the Italians were behaving like madmen the young students stood stock-still and awaited orders to retire. In truth, we are being educated by events.

The loss of the Italian commander has made the Italian posts more useless than ever. These men are now nervous, and have hardly a round of ammunition left, although they were given some of the captured Chinese Mausers and a fresh stock of cartridges three days ago. Every shadow is fired at by them at night, and the vague uneasiness which overcomes everyone when dozens of the enemy are moving in the inkly black only a few feet off seems more than they can stand.

Meanwhile the French Legation, thanks to this gun-fire, is now but a ruined mass of buildings, a portion of which has fallen into Chinese hands. Alarmed at the progress which has been made everywhere, M----, the British Minister, who is still the nominal commander-in-chief, has for days been pestering the French commandant to send him men to reinforce other points. The same stubborn answer has been sent back, that not a sailor can be spared, and that none will be sent. This curious contest between the commander of the French lines and the British Minister has ended in a species of deadlock, which bodes ill for us all. The Frenchman believes that the remains of the French lines form a vital part in the defence; the British Minister, invested with military rank by his colleagues, instead of examining the entire area of the defence carefully with his own eyes and seeing exactly whether this is so or not, never ventures beyond the limits of the British Legation. At least, no one has ever seen him. Even the so-called chief of the staff, who is the commander of the British marines, does not regularly visit the French lines. Practically, it may be said that while there is death and murder outside there is only armed neutrality within. It is an extraordinary position.

In spite of the way they have been treated up to the 1st Of July, the French and Austrians still sullenly cling to the ruins of the French barricades. But on the 1st the Chinese, elated at their success in capturing the eastern half of the French Legation, pushed their barricades nearer and nearer, and only one hundred yards behind their advanced lines they brought two guns into action, firing segment and shrapnel alternately. Under this devastating bombardment, almost _a bout portant_, as the French say, the last line of French trenches and their main-gate blockhouse became untenable. Pieces of shell tore through everything; men were wounded more and more quickly, and in the most sheltered part a French volunteer, Wagner, had his entire face blown off him, dying a horrible death. The French commander, disheartened by the treatment he had received from the commander-in-chief, and convinced that all his men would be blown to pieces if they remained where they were, ordered his bugler to sound the retire. The clarion's notes rose shrilly above this storm of fire, and dragging their dead with them, the Franco-American survivors retreated into the fortified line behind them--the Peking hotel. Here they manned the windows and barricades of the intrepid Swiss' hostelry, which had already been heavily damaged by the Chinese guns. A determination was arrived at not to be driven out of this hotel until the last man had been killed; it was necessary at all costs to prevent the enemy from breaking in so far. More volunteers were brought to reinforce this line, and the sinking spirits of the French were restored; for within half an hour of their retreat the bugler had sounded the advance again, and with a rush the abandoned positions were reoccupied and the Chinese driven back. Then the guns stopped their cannonade, and a breathing space was given which was sufficient to repair some of the damage done.

While these stirring events had been following each other in quick succession down on level ground, the grim Tartar Wall has been at once our salvation and destroyer of men. The Germans have been having a terrible time, and although they have borne themselves with soldiery composure, they have been at last driven clean down with heart-breaking losses. The guns, which the Chinese had been firing from the great Ha-ta Gate half a mile off, were advanced during the night of the 30th June to within a hundred yards of the imperfect German defences, and on the 1st of July four marines were killed and six wounded out of a post of fifteen men with nerve-shaking rapidity. The Chinese soldiers, then swarming forward under the Tartar Wall itself, threatened the little blockhouse at the base, which kept up connection with the Club and the German Legation line of barricades, and soon there was no help for it, the eastern Tartar Wall posts had to be abandoned. With the German retirement the Americans abandoned their positions facing west and rushed down to safety below. It cannot be said that the Americans are afraid; they have merely realised from the beginning what a few of us have understood. The motley crowd gathered in the British Legation, as well as our commander-in-chief, were much stirred by the American retirement, for they already saw themselves directly bombarded from the menacing height of the city walls--a prospect which can enchant no one, as the confusion already reigning would have been worse confounded had all the elderly persons been given a taste of what the outworks are experiencing. So a council of war was hastily convened very much after the style of the Boer commandoes, with everybody talking at once, and it was at once decided that the blessed Tartar Wall must be at once reoccupied at any cost. A mixed force, under the command of the American captain, stormed back again, and with a rush found themselves back in their old quarters with everything intact. The representation of the American marines had at last made themselves felt, for British marines took the places of half the Americans, who were given duty elsewhere. We thought that that had solved the question.

But this was on the 1st of the month. To-day, the 3rd of the month, the position became once more untenable, for the Chinese now being able to attack the wall defences from both sides, were pushing their barricades rapidly closer and closer until only a few feet separated them from their prey. So more men were called for, and this morning, after a short harangue, a storming-party, numbering sixty bayonets and composed of British, Americans and Russians, dashed over into the Chinese lines killing thirty of the enemy and driving the rest back in great confusion. It was a brilliant little affair and well conducted, but unfortunately Captain M----, who commanded, was wounded in the foot, and the Americans have no officer now fit to lead them. It is a curious fact worth recording that owing to wounds and staff work, neither the British nor Americans have any good officers left. It is only many days of this close-quarter fighting that shows you that without good officers no men care for moving out of shelter. Unless there are men who will sacrifice themselves, the ordinary rank and file feel under no obligation to do anything more arduous than to lie comfortably firing at the enemy. You can have no idea how hard it is to get men to make sorties; on the slightest provocation, once they have left their own barricades, they rush back to safety....

Fortunately with all these events, we have been given something else to think about, and it is a thing of this sort which re-establishes confidence more than any warlike deeds. I mention it because it is the simple truth. It is also a pretty commentary on _la bete humaine_.

You remember the V-shaped barricade garrisoned by Russian sailors, I spoke about a few days ago? Well, if you do not happen to remember, I merely need say again, that it is a barricade facing both ways on Legation Street, which now in the fulness of time has blossomed into a whole network of barricades which protect our inner lines and the British Legation base from any rush of the enemy which might succeed momentarily in getting past our outworks. The Russian sailors who furnish these posts have been having a very easy time with nothing to do but to eat and to sleep, and to mount guard, turn and turn about. Of course, this comparative idleness in all the storm and stress around us gave them time to look around and to loot the vacant houses near them. Not content with this, some of them discovered that a large number of buxom Chinese schoolgirls from the American missions were lodged but a stone's throw from their barricades. The missionaries, fearing that some scandal might occur, had placed some elderly native Christians in charge of the schoolgirls, with the strictest orders to prevent any one from entering their retreat. This was effective for some time. One dark night, however, when the usual fusillade along the outer lines began, the sailors made tremendous preparations for an attack which they said was bound to reach them. At eleven o'clock they developed the threatened attack by emptying a warning rifle or two in the air. Then warming to their work, and with their dramatic Slav imaginations charmed with the _mise en scene_, they emptied all their rifles into the air. Then they started firing volley after volley that crashed horribly in the narrow lanes, retreating the while into the forbidden area. Fiercely fighting their imaginary foe they fell back slowly; and as soon as the elderly native converts had sufficiently realised the perils to which they were exposed, these cowardly males fled hurriedly through the passageways which have been cut into the British Legation. The sailors then placed their rifles against a wall and disappeared. Unfortunately for them a strong guard sent to investigate this unexpected firing almost immediately appeared, and presently the sailors were rescued, some with much scratched faces. The girls, catlike, had known how to protect themselves!

The next day there was a terrible scene, which everybody soon heard about. Baron von R----, the Russian commander, on being acquainted with the facts of the affair, swore that his honour and the honour of Russia demanded that the culprits be shot. I shall never forget that absurd scene when R----, who speaks the vilest English, demanded with terrible gestures that the ring-leaders be identified by the victims. It was pointed out to him that the affair had occurred when all was dark--that the whole post was implicated--that it was impossible to name any one man. Then R---- swore he would shoot the whole lot of them as a lesson; he would not tolerate such things. But the very next day, when a notice was posted on the bell-tower of the British Legation forbidding everyone under severe penalties to approach this delectable building, R---- had his _revanche a la Russe_, as he called it. Taking off his cap, and assuming a very polite air of doubt and perplexity, he inquired of the lady missionary committee which over-sees the welfare of these girls, "_Pardon, mesdames_," he said purposely in French, "_cette affiche est-ce seulement pour les civiles ou aussi pour les militaires!_"

VII

THE HOSPITAL AND THE GRAVEYARD

5th July, 1900.

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It depends very much on moments as to whether one has time to laugh or to cry. The last time I wrote, we were nearly all laughing--when we had the time; to-day most of us are doing the reverse. Be one ever so hardened, it is impossible to go to the humble hospital and the little graveyard of our battered lines without tender feelings welling up, and perhaps even a silent tear dropping. We have all been to either one or the other place to-day; our losses are mounting up. In the hospital alone there are now fifty sorely wounded and tortured men, groaning and moving this way and that. The bullet and shell wounds have so far been distinguished for their deadliness, probably because of the close ranges at which we are fighting. It is a strange assembly, in all truth, to be mustered within the precincts of a diplomatic Chancery, wherein were prepared only a few short weeks ago dry-as-dust documents, which so hastened the storm by not promptly arresting it. For the Chancery of the British Legation is now the hospital, and on despatch tables, lately littered with diplomatic documents, operations are now almost hourly performed and muttered groans wrung from maimed men. It is a curious thought this--to think that the vengeance of foolish despatches overtakes innocent men and lays them groaning and bleeding on the very spot where the ink which framed them flowed. It does not often happen that cause and effect meet like this.

It is a wretched hospital, too, even though it is the best which can be made. Every window has to be bricked in partially; every entrance where bullets might flick in must be closed; and in the heat and dust of a Peking summer the stench is terrible. Worse still are the flies, which, attracted by the newly spilt blood of strong men, swarm so thickly that another torture is added. Half the nationalities of Europe lie groaning together, each calling in his native tongue for water, or for help to loosen a bandage which in the shimmering heat has become unbearable. And as the rifle cracking rises to the storm it always does every few hours, more men will be brought in and laid on that gruesome operating table. The very passageways have been already invaded by men lying on long chairs, because there are no more beds. Even they are happy; they have crept to a place where they can gasp in quiet; that is all they ask for.

In a hideous little room at the back the dead are prepared for their last resting place--prepared in a manner which is shocking, but is the best that can be done. I cannot describe it. In the cool of the evening, when perhaps the enemy's fire has slackened a little, and the bullets only sob very faintly overhead, and the shells have ceased their brutal attentions, stretcher parties come quietly and carry out the corpses. That is the worst sight of all.

There are no coffins, and the dead, shrouded in white cloth, have sometimes their booted feet pushing through the coarse fabric in which they are sewn. Never shall I forget the sight of one man, a great, long fellow, who seemed immense in his white shroud. A movement of the bearers struggling under his unaccustomed weight burst his winding sheet and his feet shot out as if he were making a last effort to escape from the pitiless grasp of Mother Earth extending her arms towards him in the form of a narrow trench. There was something hideous and terrible in these booted feet. One man, unnerved at the sight, gave a short cry, as if he had been struck. That is the brutal side of life--death.

There is also no room and not time to give each one a separate grave, these our dead; and so, strapped to a plank, they are lowered into the ground, a few shovelfuls of earth are hastily dropped in on top, and then another corpse is laid down. Sometimes there are three or four in a single grave, and when the grave is filled up the dead men's order is written on rough crosses. That is all.

At such burials you may see the real truth which is hidden by the mask of every-day life. Men you thought were good fellows turn out to be hearts of stone; the true hearts of gold are generally those who are devil-may-care and indifferently regarded when there is no _Sturm und Drang._ I, who have never been religious, begin to understand what such phrases mean--"that many are called, but few are chosen." It is not possible that the final valuation can be that of the every-day world. Then when I think of these things, I long to get away from this imprisonment; to revalue things in a new light; to see and to understand.

But as you pass away from this torture room and this execution ground a sullen anger seizes you. Why should so many be called--why should we die thus in a hole?...

VIII

THE FAILURE

6th July, 1900.

* * * * *

I have always found that there is a corrective for everything in this world. Action is the best one of all, people say. It is not always so.

The little Japanese colonel stood this morning pulling his thin moustaches very thoughtfully and looking earnestly ahead of him when I came on duty with a dozen others. In front was a great mass of ruins, concealing a couple of entrenched posts of our own men, where I was going, and farther on, half masked by the ruins, some of the enemy's advanced barricades lay.

"I think," said the colonel finally, pronouncing on the situation with inherited Japanese caution, "that it will be very difficult, but we must try."

He referred to the wretched Chinese gun belonging to the redoubtable Tung Fu-hsiang, as we had discovered from big banners pitched near by, which had been steadily and methodically smashing in the northern front of our defence, and was fast rendering our lines untenable here. We always went on duty at these posts with little enthusiasm. We could not hit back. Another gun, a newcomer, had also been posted somewhere near the ruins of the Chinese Customs, as if encouraged by the success of the other one, and was now playing on the main-gate posts of the Su wang-fu, and rendering even these more and more dangerous for us to hold permanently.

The newcomer was, however, still, comparatively speaking, far away; it was our old friend we most dreaded. Well hidden, it pelted us with rusty but effective shells night and day. To make another sortie was highly dangerous for the ill-success of the first one in this quarter had certainly encouraged the Chinese, and this time we would have to be prepared for a very vigorous defence, which might bring on a series of counter-attacks. Then, too, the wall-split and barricaded grounds beyond our own feeble defences meant that a single false step would lead us into an _impasse_ from which we could not lightly escape. Rifle-fire would pelt us at close quarters, shells would burst right in our midst; it was not a pleasant prospect even for the biggest fire-eaters of our lines. We had, however, to remember that so long as we held firm on the outer rim of our ruins would the enormous piles of brickwork which lie around, either in the form of ruined houses or wrecked compound walls, act as traverses and make the heavy rifle and cannon fire being poured in nothing very terrible. But as soon as we are forced to abandon our advanced lines the enemy speedily will swarm in, and then no sortie, however well planned, can dislodge him. He will make our best defences his parallels--and in a week he will be able to split us in half. These things made immediate action really advisable, and soon the word was passed round that a big sortie was to be made at once.

Once more all the morning was spent in making preparations. Marines and volunteer reserves were brought over from the British Legation to line the trenches and barricades, and cover the advance with a heavy rifle fire; the Italians, who were to co-operate by jumping down off their northwestern hillock and rushing forward, were warned for duty, and had fresh ammunition served out to them; and finally volunteers were called for, and the command of the sortie handed over to a Japanese officer, Captain A----.

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. The bugler blew a few sharp notes to rally some of those who were hanging back in confusion, and finally, riflemen in advance and the converts herded tremblingly behind by a brave Japanese Secretary of Legation in spectacles, we succeeded in climbing up on to the gun platform. The gunners, who had been lying beside their weapon, fled precipitately as soon as they saw our heads come over the barricade, but to our right and left the enemy was now swarming forward with frantic yells. The converts, who were to drag off the gun while we covered them with our rifles and bayonets, could not be made to advance, but clung to the wall screaming piteously. We beat some of them over the head with our rifle-butts and kicked them savagely in a fever of anxiety to put some spirit in them, but nothing could move them forward. It must be always so; the Christian Chinaman face to face with his fierce, heathen countrymen is as a lamb; he cannot fight. Then before we knew it the little Japanese captain was on the ground, two or three Japanese sailors fell too, a _sauve qui peut_ began, and everything was in inextricable disorder. The Chinese commanders, seeing our plight, urged their men forward, and soon hundreds of rifles were crashing at us, and savage-looking men in brightly coloured tunics and their red trouser-covers swinging in the breeze leaped forward on us. It was a terrible sight. There was nothing to do but to retire, which we did, dragging in our wounded with brutal energy. At a ruined wall, half a dozen of us made a stand, covering the retreat, which had degenerated into a rout, and, firing steadily at a close range, we dropped man after man. Some of the Kansu soldiers rushed right up to us, and only fell a few feet from our rifles, yelling, "Sha, Sha,"--kill, kill, to the last moment; and one fellow, as he was beaten down, threw a sword, which stabbed one of our men in the thigh and terribly wounded him.

It must have been all over in a very few minutes, for the next thing I remember is that we were all inside our lines again, and that my knees were bleeding profusely from the scrambling over barricades and ruins. We were completely out of breath from the excitement and the running, and most of us were crimson with rage at our ill-success when we had practically had everything in our own hands. Everyone was for shooting a convert or two as an example for the rest, but in the end it came to nothing. Meanwhile the fusillade against us grew enormously in vigour. From every side bullets flicked in huge droves. The Chinese, as if incensed at our enterprise, strove to repay us by pelting us unmercifully, and awakened into action by this persistent firing, the roar of musketry and cannon soon extended to every side until it crashed with unexampled fury. Messages came from half a dozen quarters for the reserves to be sent back, and in the hurry and general confusion we could not learn what had happened to the Italians or the rest of the enterprise.

Meanwhile our wounded were lying on the ground, and the news soon spread that the Japanese surgeon had pronounced the little captain's case hopeless. I went to see him as soon as I could, and seldom have I seen a more pitiful sight. Lying on a coat thrown one the ground, with his side torn open by an iron bullet, the stricken man looked like a child who had met with a terrible accident. He could not have been more than five feet high, and his sword, which was a tiny blade, about thirty inches long, was strapped to his wrist by a cord, which he refused to have released. Beating his arms up and down in the air with that tiny sword bobbing with them, he struggled to master the pain, but the effort was too great for him, and he kept moaning in spite of himself. A few feet from him sat a wounded Japanese sailor, who had been struck in the knee by a soft-nosed bullet. His trousers had been ripped up to put on a field dressing, and never have I before seen a more ghastly wound. The bullet had drilled into his knee-cap in a neat little hole, but the soft metal, striking the bony substance within, had splashed as it progressed through, with the result that the hole made on coming out was as big as the knee-cap itself. The sailor bore his wound with a stoicism which seemed to me superhuman. The sweat was pouring off his face in his agony, but he had stuffed a cap into his mouth so that he might not disgrace himself by crying out, and even in his agony he lay perfectly still, with staring eyes, as he waited to be carried to the operating table.

Presently the captain died with a sudden stiffening, and news came in from a number of other posts that men were falling, and we must detach some of ours to reinforce threatened points. In utter gloom the day ended, and miserably tired, we got hardly any sleep until the small hours.

IX

AN INTERLUDE

8th July, 1900.

* * * * *

And yet in spite of such things there are plenty of interludes. For of the nine hundred and more European men, women and children besieged in the Legation lines, many are playing no part at all. There are, of course, some four hundred marines and sailors, and more than two hundred women and children. The first are naturally ranged in the fighting line; the second can be but non-combatants. But of the remainder, two hundred and more of whom are able-bodied, most are shirking. There are less than eighty taking an active part in the defence--the eighty being all young men. The others have claimed the right of sanctuary, and will do nothing. At most they have been induced to form themselves into a last reserve, which, I hope, may never be employed. If it is.... The duties of this reserve consist in mustering round the clanging bell of the Jubilee Tower in the British Legation when a general alarm is rung. When the firing becomes very heavy that bell begins clanging.

There was a general alarm the other night when I happened to be off duty, and I stopped in front of the bell-tower to see it all. The last reserve tumbled from their sleeping-places in various stages of deshabille, all talking excitedly. The women had too much sense to move a great deal, although the alarm might be a signal for anything. A few of them got up, too, and came out into the open; but the majority stayed where they were. Presently the commander-in chief appeared in person in his pyjamas, twirling his moustaches, and listened to the increasing fusillade and cannonade directed against the outposts. The din and roar, judged by the din and roar of every-day life, may have been nerve-breaking, but to any one who had been so close to it for eighteen days it was nothing exceptional. The night attack, which had been heralded after the usual manner by a fierce blowing of trumpets, simply meant thousands of rifles crashing off together, and as far as the British Legation was concerned, you might stand just as safely there as on the Boulevard des Italiens or in Piccadilly. There was a tremendous noise, and swarms of bullets passing overhead, but that was all. The time had not arrived for actual assaults to be delivered; there was too much open ground to be covered.

The groups of reserves stood and listened in awe, the commander-in-chief twirled his moustaches with composure, and two or three other refugee Plenipotentiaries slipped out and nervously waited the upshot of it all. It was a very curious scene. Well, the fusillade soon reached the limit of its _crescendo_, and then with delighted sighs, the _diminuendo_ could plainly be divined. The Chinese riflemen, having blazed off many rounds of ammunition, and finding their rifle barrels uncomfortably warm, were plainly pulling them out of their loopholes and leaning them up against the barricades. The _diminuendo_ became more and more marked, and finally, except for the usual snipers' shots, all was over. So the reserves were dismissed and went contentedly off to bed. As far as the actual defence was concerned, this comedy might have been left unplayed. In the dense gloom those men could never have been moved anywhere. Such a manoeuvre would have brought about a panic at once, for there is little mutual confidence, and nothing has been done to promote it.

At first, in the hurry and scurry and confusion of the initial attacks, when everything and everybody was unprepared and upset, this state of things escaped attention. Now all the fighting line is becoming openly discontented. There is favouritism and incompetency in everything that is being done. Two days ago a young Scotch volunteer got killed almost on purpose, because he was sick and tired of the cowardice and indecision. And now, not content with all this, there is a new folly. An alleged searchlight has been seen flickering on the skies at night, and M----, the British Minister, has in a burst of optimism declared that it is the relief under S---- signalling to us. Yet there are men who know exactly what it is--the opening of the doors of a blast-furnace in the Chinese city, which sends up a ruddy light in certain weather.

Discipline is becoming bad, too, and sailors and volunteers off duty are looting the few foreign stores enclosed in our lines. Everything is being taken, and the native Christians, finding this out, have been pouring in bands when the firing ceases and wrecking everything which they cannot carry away.

A German marine killed one, and several have been dangerously wounded. In our present condition anything is possible. Still, the fortification work is proceeding steadily, and the appearance of the base, the British Legation, has been miraculously changed. Enormous quantities of sandbags have been turned out and placed in position, and all the walls are now loopholed. With all this access of strength, we are much more secure, and yet our best contingents are being very slowly but very continuously shot to pieces. Our casualty list is now well into the second hundred, and as the line of defenders thins, the men are becoming more savage. In addition to looting, there have been a number of attempts on the native girl converts, which have been hushed up.... Ugly signs are everywhere, and the position becomes from day to day less enviable.

X

THE GUNS

10th July, 1900.

* * * * *

Had we a single gun how different it would be! We could parade it boldly under the enemy's nose; sweep his barricades and his advanced lines away in a cloud of dust and brick-chips; bombard his camps which we have located; make him sorry and ashamed ... as it is we can do nothing; we have not a single piece which can be called serious artillery; and we must suffer the segment which the enemy affects in almost complete silence. Listen to our list of weapons.

First, there is the Italian one-pounder firing ballistite. It is absolutely useless. Its snapping shells are so small that you can thrust them in your pocket without noticing them. This gun is merely a plaything. And yet being the best we have, it is wheeled unendingly around and fired at the enemy from a dozen different points. It may give confidence, but that is all it can give. The other day I watched it at work on a heavy barricade being constructed by night and day by the methodical enemy. By night the Chinese soldiery work as openly as they please, for no outpost may waste its ammunition by indiscriminate shooting. But during the day, orders or no orders, it has become rash for the enemy to expose himself to our view; and even the fleeting glimpse of a moving hand is made the excuse for a hailstorm of fire. This has made excessive caution the order of the day, and you can almost believe, when no rifles are firing to disturb such a conviction, that there are only dead men round us. Yet with nothing to be seen, countless hands are at work; in spite of the greatest vigilance barricades and barriers grow up nearer and nearer to us both night and day; we are being tied in tighter. These mysterious barricades, built in parallels, are so cunningly constructed that our fiercest sorties must in the end beat themselves to pieces against brick and stone; if the enemy can complete his plans we shall be choked silently. That is why the Italian gun is so often requisitioned.

I was saying that I watched the one-pounder at work against the enemy's brick-bound lines. Each time, as ammunition is becoming precious, the gun was more carefully sighted and fired, and each time, with a little crash, the baby shell shot through the barricades, boring a ragged hole six or eight inches in diameter. Two or three times this might always be accomplished with everything on the Chinese side silent as death. The cunning enemy! Then suddenly, as the gun was shifted a bit to continue the work of ripping up that barricade, attention would be distracted, and before you could explain it the ragged holes would be no more. Unseen hands had repaired the damage by pushing up dozens of bricks and sandbags, and before the game could be opened again, unseen rifles were rolling off in their dozens and tearing the crests of our outworks. In that storm of brick-chips, split sandbags and dented nickel, you could not move or reply. That is the Italian gun.

The next most useful weapon should be the Austrian machine-gun, which is a very modern weapon, and throws Mannlicher bullets at the rate of six hundred to the minute. Yet it, too, is practically useless. It has been tried everywhere and found to be defective. When it rattles at full speed, it has been seen that its sighting is illusory--that it throws erratically high in the air, and that ammunition is simply wasted. It cannot help us in the slightest. The value of machine-guns has been always overrated.

Then there is a Nordenfeldt belonging to the British marines, and a very small Colt, which was brought up by the Americans. The Nordenfeldt is absolutely useless and now refuses to work; the Colt is so small, being single-barrelled, that it can only do boy's work. Yet this Colt is the most satisfactory of all, and when we have dragged it out with us and played it on the enemy, it has shot true and straight. They say it has killed more men than all the rest put together....

There should be a Russian gun, too--a good Russian gun of respectable calibre. But although the shells were brought, a thousand of them, too, the gun was forgotten at the Tientsin Station! Such a thing could only happen to Russians, everybody says. But some people say it was forgotten on purpose, because De G---- had received absolute assurance from the Chinese Government that the Russian Legation would not be attacked under any circumstances, and that sailors were only brought up to keep faith with the other Powers....

This miserable list, as you will see, means that we have nothing with which to reply to the enemy's fire. We are not so proud and foolish as to wish to silence the guns ranged against us, but, at least, we should be able to make some reply. In desperation, the sailor-gunners tried to manufacture a crude piece of ordnance by lashing iron and steel together, and encasing it in wood. Fortunately it was never fired, for in the nick of time an old rusty muzzle-loader has been discovered in a blacksmith's shop within our lines, and has been made to fire the Russian ammunition by the exercise of much ingenuity. It belches forth mainly flames, and smokes and makes a terrific report. Some say this is as useful as a modern twelve-pounder....

About the Chinese guns we can find out very little, excepting that none, or very few, of the modern weapons which are in stock at Peking have been used against us. There are at most only nine or ten in constant use; perhaps the others have been dragged away down the long Tientsin road. But even these nine or ten, if they were worked together, would nearly wreck us. Our sorties have pushed some of them back.

Two of these guns are being fired at us from a staging on the Palace wall--sometimes regularly and persistently, sometimes as if they had fallen under the influence of the conflicting factors which are struggling to win the day in the Palace. If they bombarded us without intermission for twenty-four hours, they would render the British Legation almost untenable. Two or three more guns are on the Tartar Wall; three or four are ranged against the Su wang-fu and French lines; some are kept travelling round us searching for a weak spot. They have no system or fire-discipline. Some use shrapnel and segment; others fire solid round shot all covered with rust. Silent sometimes with a mysterious silence for days at a time, they come to life again suddenly in a blaze of activity, and wreak more ruin in a few minutes than weeks of rifle fusillade and days of firing on the fringe of outer buildings. And yet we cannot complain. We have so many walls, so many houses, so many trees, so many obstructions of every kind, that they cannot get a clear view of anything. These singing shells, which might breach any one part, were the guns massed and their fire continuous, are sneered at by most of us already. Provided you can lie low, shell-fire soon loses even its moral effect.

XI

SNIPING

* * * * *

The siege has now become such a regular business with everyone that there are almost rules and regulations, which, if not promulgated among besieged and besiegers, are, at least, more or less understood things. Thus, for instance, after one or two in the morning the crashing of rifles around us is always quite stilled; the gunners have long ceased paying us their attentions, and a certain placid calmness comes over all. The moon may then be aloft in the skies; and if it is, the Tartar Wall stands out clear and black, while the ruined entrenchments about us are flooded in a silver light which makes the sordidness of our surroundings instantly disappear in the enchantment of night. Our little world is tired; we have all had enough; and even though they may run the risk of being court-martialled, it is always fairly certain that by three or four in the morning half the outposts and the picquets will be dead asleep. It was not like that in the beginning, for then nobody slept much night or day; and if one did, it was only to awake with a moan, the result of some weird nightmare.

Now with the weeks which have gone by since we broke off relations with the rest of the world it is quite different, and we pander to our little weakness of forty winks before a loophole, although orderly officers may stumble by all night on their rounds and curse and swear at this state of affairs. By training yourself, however, I have found that you can practically sleep like a dog, with one eye open and both ears on the alert--that light slumber which the faintest stirring immediately breaks; when you are like this you can do your duty at a loophole.

It is such dull work, too, in front of the eternal loopholes, with nothing but darkness and thick shadows around you, and the rest of a post of four or five men vigorously snoring. The first half hour goes fairly quickly, and, perhaps even the second; but the last hour is dreary, tiresome work. And when your two hours are up, and contentedly you kick your relief on the ground beside you, he only moans faintly, but does not stir. Dead with sleep is he. Then you kick him again with all that zest which comes from a sense of your own lost slumbers, and once more he moans in his fatigue, more loudly this time, but still he does not move.

Finally, in angry despair you land the butt of your rifle brutally on his chest, and he will start up with a cry or an oath.

"Time," you mutter. The relief grumblingly rises to his feet, rubbing his glued eyes violently, and asks you if there is anything. "Nothing," you answer curtly. It is always nothing, for although the enemy's barricades rear themselves perhaps not more than twenty or thirty feet from where you stand, you know that it takes a lusty stomach to rush that distance and climb your fortifications and ditches in the dark in the face of the furious fire which sooner or later would burst out. For we understand our work now. Experience is the only schoolmaster.

So with your two hours on and your four hours off the night spends itself and dawn blushes in the skies. It is in all truth weary work, those long watches of the night.... Sometimes even your four hours' sleeping time is rudely broken into by half a dozen alarms; for separated sometimes by hundreds of feet from your comrades of the next post, the instinct of self-preservation makes you line your loopholes and peer anxiously into the gloom beyond, when any one of the enemy shows that he is afoot. A single rifle-shot spitting off near by is as often as not the cause of the alarm; for that rifle-shot cracking out discordantly and awakening the echoes may be the signal for the dread rush which would spell the beginning of the end. Once one line is broken into we know instinctively that the confusion which would follow would engulf us all. There is no confidence....

When you have time you may relieve his monotony by sniping.

In the early morning, the very early morning, is the time for this work--say, roughly, between the hours of four and six, when the soldier Chinaman beyond our lines is yawningly arousing himself from his slumbers and squats blinking and inattentive before his morning tea. Then if you are a natural hunter, are inclined to risk a good deal, and something of a quick shot, you may have splendid chances which teach you more than you could ever learn by months in front of targets. Baron von R----, the cynical commander of the Russian detachment, is the crack sniper of us all, because he has not a great deal to do in the daytime, and, also, because beyond his lines of the Russian Legation all is generally quiet with a curious and suggestive quietness. At four in the morning R----, with his sailor's habits, generally rises, shakes himself like a dog, lights his eternal Russian cigarette, takes a few whiffs, and then sallies forth with a Mannlicher carbine and a clip of five cartridges. His sailors are duly warned to cover him if he has to retire in disorder, but so far he has met with no mishap. Cautiously pushing out beyond his barricades, he climbs a ruined wall, reaches the top and buries himself in the dust in pleasant anticipation of what will follow.

Presently he is rewarded. A Chinese brave comes out into the open, selects a corner, and sits down to smoke under cover of a barricade. The Baron pushes his clip of cartridges deliberately into the magazine, shoots one into the rifle barrel through the feed, and then very cautiously and very slowly draws a steady bead on the man. I have seen him at work. Five seconds may go by, perhaps even ten, for the Baron allows himself only one shot in each case, and then bang! the bullet speeds on its way, and the Chinaman rolls over bored through and through. On a good day the bag may be two or three; on a bad day the Russian commander returns with his five cartridges intact and a persistent Russian shrug, for he never fires in vain, and there are certain canons in this sport which he does not care to violate lightly.

Myself, enamoured with this game, after I had watched the Russian commander two mornings, I, too, determined that I would embark on it, although I have no such leisure in the early hours. Eleven or twelve o'clock in the bright sunlight has become my hour, when the sun beats down hotly on our heads, and everyone is drowsy with the noon-heat. Then you may also catch the Chinaman smoking and drinking his tea once again, and if you are quick a dead man is your reward. Every dead man puts another drop of caution into the attackers. It is therefore good and useful.

Yesterday I had great luck, for I got three men within very few minutes of one another; and then when I was fondly imagining that I might pick off dozens more from my coign of vantage, I was swept back into our lines under such a storm of fire as I have never experienced before. I should tell you that there are practically only two shooting-grounds where this curious sport may be had; there are only two areas of brick and ruins where by judicious manoeuvring you may steal out and get the enemy on his exposed flank where no barricades protect him from an enfilading fire. These two areas lie opposite the Russian front, and beyond the extreme Japanese western posts of the Su wang-fu. Since the Russian front is the Russian commander's own preserve, it is from the Japanese posts that I work.

On the day when I made my record bag, half-past eleven found everybody drowsy and the time propitious. Our northern Peking sun beats down pitilessly from the cloudless skies at such a time, and so I had the field completely to myself. Firing had ceased absolutely on all sides, and the Chinese had begun to sleep. Crouching low down I scurried across from the Japanese post to some ruins fifty feet off, and remained quietly squatting there, panting in the heat, to get myself bearings. Around me all was silent, and thirty or forty yards from where I lay I could see the brown face of the Japanese sailor laughing at me through a loophole. Presently bringing my glasses into play I swept the huge pile of ruined houses and streets lying huddled on all sides.

There was not a twig stirring or a shadow moving. All was dead quiet. The main Chinese camp on this side was placed in H----'s abandoned compounds--that we had discovered long ago--but the battalions there were now apparently asleep with not so much as a sentry out. So, gaining confidence, I pushed on, working parallel to Prince Su's outer walls and about fifty feet beyond them. Suddenly I stopped and dropped, quite by instinct, for although my mind had telegraphed the danger to my knees, I did not fully realise what it was until I was on the ground. Just round the corner there was a glimpse of three men stripped to the waist to be seen. Had they seen me? I waited in some suspense for a few seconds pressed my glasses back into their case, and gripped my rifle. My anxiety was soon set at rest, for with a clatter, which seemed ten times greater than it really was, the men set quickly to work on a structure. They were building something, and now was my chance. Getting to the corner again I peered cautiously around, and there but seventy or eighty feet from where I lay three strapping fellows were raising a heavy log. They had pulled off their red and black tunics, and were only in their baggy breeches and the curious little stomach apron the Northern Chinaman affects to keep himself from catching cold.