rounded a corner with the sound of much wailing on all sides, and ran
suddenly full tilt into at least two or three dozen Boxers, who have
been allowed to do exactly as they like for days. There was a fierce
scuffle, for we were down on them in a wild rush before they could get
away, and they showed some fight. I marked down one man and drove an
old sword at his chest. The fellow howled frightfully, and just as I
was going to despatch him, a French sailor saved me the trouble by
stretching him out with a resounding thump on the head from his Lebel
rifle. The Boxer curled over like a sick worm and expired. There was
not much time, however, to take stock of such minor incidents as the
slaying of individual men, even when one was the principal actor, for
everywhere men were running frantically in and out of houses, shouting
and screaming, and the confusion was such that no one knew what to do.
The Boxers had been calmly butchering all people who seemed to them to
be Christians--had been engaged in this work for many hours--and all
were now mixed up in such a confused crowd that it was impossible to
distinguish friends and foes. As they caught sight of us, many of the
marauders tore off their red sashes and fell howling to the ground, in
the hope that they would be passed by. Dozens of narrow lanes round
the ruined cathedral, which was still smoking, were full of Christian
families hiding in the most impossible places, and everywhere Boxers
and banditti, sometimes in groups, sometimes singly, still chased them
and cut them down. Numbers had already been massacred, and several
lanes looked like veritable shambles. The stench of human blood in the
hot June air was almost intolerable, and the sights more than we could
bear. Men, women and children lay indiscriminately heaped together,
some hacked to pieces, others with their throats cut from ear to ear,
some still moving, others quite motionless.

Gradually we collected an ever-growing mob of terror stricken people
who had escaped this massacre. Some of the girls seemed quite
paralysed with fear; others were apparently temporarily bereft and
kept on shrieking with a persistency that was maddening. A young
French sailor who did not look more than seventeen, and was splashed
all over with blood from having fallen in one of the worst places,
kept striking them two and three at a time, and cursing them in fluent
Breton, in the hope of bringing them to reason. "_Eh bien, mes belles