s, 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