hen reinforced by fresh thousands of
throats, doubtless wetted by copious drafts of _samshu_, it grew again
suddenly, rising stronger and stronger, hoarser and hoarser, more
insane and more possessed, until the tympanums of our ears were so
tortured that they seemed fit to burst. Could walls and gates have
fallen by mere will and throat power, ours of Peking would have
clattered down Jericho-like. Our womenfolk were frozen with
horror--the very sailors and marines muttered that this was not to be
war, but an Inferno of Dante with fresh horrors. You could feel
instinctively that if these men got in they would tear us from the
scabbards of our limbs. It was pitch dark, too, and in the gloom the
towers and battlements of the Tartar Wall loomed up so menacingly that
they, too, seemed ready to fall in and crush us.

For possibly three or four hours this insane demonstration proceeded
apace. The Manchu guards listened gloomily and curiously from the
inside of the gates, but made no attempt to open them, but they
equally refused sullenly to parley with a strong body of sailors and
volunteers we sent with instructions to shoot any one attempting to
unlock the barriers. Yet it was evident that the guards had received
special instructions, and that the gates would not be handed over to
the mob.

A few minutes before midnight the sounds became more sullen, and
beneath the general uproar another note, one of those in distress,
began, as it were, like an undercurrent to this pandemonium. The cause
we had not long to seek, for presently flames began to shoot up, a
sight we were by now well accustomed to, though not in this purely
trading quarter of the city. The fire, started with savage disregard
in the very centre of the most densely populated street of the Chinese
city, spread with terrible rapidity. Soon both sides of Ch'ien Men
great street, just on the other side of the Tartar Wall, were
enveloped in raging flames, and a lurid light, growing ever brighter
and brighter, turned the dark night into an unnatural day.

Between the incendiaries and ourselves the great Tartar Wall stood
firm, but though this ancient defence against other barbarians was an
effective protection for us, it could not long remain immune itself.
The _lou_, or square pagoda-like tower facing the Chinese city side,
caught some of the thousands and tens of thousands of sparks flying
skywards, and it was not long before the vast pile was burning as
fiercely