ange cries smote one's ears--all the cursing of armed men, whose
discipline has been loosened by days of strain and the impossibility
of manoeuvring. One word struck me and clung to me again; everybody
among the Indian troops was crying it: "_Chullo, chullo, chullo_,"
they were calling.

The general advance, which had been from the outer city, as soon as
the news had been brought through that a way to the Legations had been
opened, had thrown the various units into an immense confusion.
Infantry, cavalry, artillery, and the fighting trains, were all mixed
in a terrible tangle. Some had come forward so rapidly, in their
eagerness not to be left out of it all, that they had passed in under
the walls as soon as the gates had been burst open, and had now got
jammed into our narrow streets and were unable to move. Just under the
ramp of the Tartar Wall I came on some Indian cavalry--about thirty or
forty troopers covered with mud and dirt, and led by a single British
officer. As soon as the latter caught sight of me, he shouted an angry
question as to what all this firing meant, and how in h---- he could
get out of this into the open.... He rained his questions at me like
the others had done, never waiting for an answer. The firing, in all
truth, had increased enormously, and now rang out with a most
tremendous roar. It always came from over there to the northwest,
round about the Palace entrances. Evidently Chinese troops were
holding all the Palace gates in great force, and for some reason
wished to keep the relief columns at bay at all costs until nightfall.
I yelled something of this to my disconsolate cavalry officer, and
suggested that he should follow me up the wall and see for himself. I
knew nothing. "Cavalry can't climb a wall," he furiously replied as I
rushed up above, and as I climbed higher that voice followed me in
gusts which became fainter and fainter, "Cavalry can't climb a wall!
cavalry can't climb a wall!" Then the road blotted him and his voice
completely out and a swelling scene was before me.

For up there I soon understood. A mass of Indian infantry, with some
machine-guns, had established themselves for hundreds of yards along
this commanding height, among the old Chinese barricades, and were now
firing as fast as they could down into the distant Palace enclosures.
Overhead bullets were passing in continuous streams, and crouching low
in an angle of the buttresses lay a number of wounded men. Of the