a gallant officer, who feared nothing, was shot dead through the head, making the ninth officer killed or severely wounded since the beginning.  Yesterday, also, the new Mongol market defences trembled on the brink hour after hour, and with them the fate of three thousand heads.  New Chinese troops armed with Mannlicher carbines, the handiest weapons for barricade fighting, had been pushed up behind a veil of light entrenchments to within twenty feet of the Mongol market posts, and their fire was so tremendous that it drove right through our bricks and sandbags.  God willed that just as the final rush was coming a Chinese barricade gave way; our men emptied their magazines with the rapidity of despair into the swarms of Chinese riflemen disclosed; dozens of them fell killed and wounded, and the rest were driven back in disorder.  Ten seconds more would have made them masters of our positions.  The closeness of this final agony was such that squads of reserves, who had not fired a shot during the siege, voluntarily went forward to the threatened points and lay there the whole night.  At last it has been driven home on all that our fate hangs in the balance, and has hung in the balance for weeks.  But it is too late now.  If a single link in our chain is broken there will be a sauve qui pent which no heroism can stop.

XXIX

THE NIGHT OF THE THIRTEENTH

14th August, 1900.

* * * * *

All yesterday the fire hardly diminished in violence, and more and more of our men were hit....  The Chinese commanders, having learned of the loss of a Chinese general and a great number of his men at the Mongol market, have been having their revenge by giving us not a minute’s rest.  Up to six o’clock yesterday evening I had been continually on duty for forty-eight hours, with a few minutes’ sleep during the lulls.  At six in the evening I stretched out.  At half-past eight the pandemonium had risen to such a pitch that sleep without opiates was impossible.  All round our lines roared and barked Mausers, Mannlichers, jingals, and Tower muskets, every gun that could be brought to bear on us firing as fast and as fiercely as possible in a last wild effort.  The sound was so immense, so terrifying, that many could hardly breathe.  Against the barricades, through half-blocked loopholes, and on to the very ground, myriads of projectiles beat their way, hissing and crashing, ricochetting and slashing, until it seemed impossible any living thing could exist in such a storm.

It was the night of the 13th.  Not a word had been heard of the relief columns, not a message, not a courier had come in.  But could anything have dared to move to us?  Even the Tsung-li Yamen, affrighted anew at this storm of fire which it can no longer control, had not dared or attempted to communicate with us.  We were abandoned to our own resources.  At best we would have to work out our own salvation.