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. Was it
to be the last night of this insane Boxerism, or merely the beginning
of a still more terrible series of attacks with massed assaults pushed
right home on us? In any case, there was but one course--not to cede
one inch until the last man had been hit. All the isolated
post-commanders--I had risen to be one--decided that on us hinged the
fate of all. The very idea of a supreme command watching intelligently
and overseeing every spot of ground was impossible. It had been a war
of post-commanders and their men from the beginning; it would remain
so to the bitter end. A siege teaches you that this is always so.

By ten o'clock every sleeping man had been pulled up and pushed
against the barricades. Privately all the doubtful men were told that
if they moved they would be shot as they fell back. Everywhere we had
been discovering that in the pitch dark many could hardly be held in
place. By eleven o'clock the fire had grown to its maximum pitch. It
was impossible that it could become heavier, for the enemy was manning
every coign of vantage along the entire line, and blazing so fiercely
and pushing in so close that many of the riflemen must have fallen
from their own fire. From the great Tartar Wall to the Palace
enclosure, and then round in a vast jagged circle, thousands of jets
of fire spurted at us; and as these jets pushed closer and closer, we
gave orders to reply steadily and slowly. Twice black bunches of men
crept quickly in front of me, but were melted to pieces. By twelve
o'clock the exhaustion of the attackers became suddenly marked. The
rifles, heated to a burning pitch, were no longer deemed safe even by
Chinese fatalists; and any men who had ventured out into the open had
been so severely handled by our fire that they had no stomach for a
massed charge. Trumpet calls now broke out along the line and echoed
pealingly far and near. The riflemen were being called off.

But hardly had the fire dropped for ten or fifteen minutes than it
broke out again with renewed vigour. Fresh troops lying in reserve had
evidently been called up, and by one o'clock the tornado was fiercer
th