e quarters, we found these
protecting insignia already flying boldly from every house. Everybody
wished to be friends. But my men exhorted me to proceed quickly and to
escape from these districts, which, they alleged, were still full of
Boxers and disbanded soldiery; and yielding to their entreaties, we
again dashed onwards quicker and quicker. For half an hour and more we
had, indeed, lost sight of every friendly face.

The succession of streets we passed was endless. There were nothing
but these deserted main thorough-fares, and the scuttling people on
the side alleys, and in absolute silence we reached an immense street
running due north and south. To my surprise, although everything was
now quite quiet, dead Chinese soldiers lay around here in some
numbers. There were both infantry and cavalry flung headlong on the
ground as they had fled. One big fellow, carrying a banner, had been
toppled over, pony and all, as he rode away, and now lay in
picturesque confusion, half thrown down the steep slope of the raised
driving road, with his tragedy painted clearly as a picture. In the
bright sunshine, with all absolutely quiet and peaceful around, it
seemed impossible that these men should have met with a violent death
such a short while ago amid a roar of sound. It was funny, curious,
inexplicable.... For my men, however, there were no such thoughts;
they climbed off their ponies, and, whipping out knives or bayonets,
they slit the bandoliers and pouches from every dead soldier and threw
them into the carts. They had become in this short time good
campaigners; you can never have too much ammunition.

The big Shantung recruit, whom I had come across so oddly only three
days before, was now once again plainly excited and smelled quarry. I
remembered, then, that there was nothing very strange in the decisive
actions of all my followers; they were being led by this man and told
exactly what to do. He had, after all, been outside all the time, and
knew what had been going on and where now to strike hard! Quickly,
without speaking a word, he pushed ahead, and arriving at the big
gates of another inn, loudly called on some one inside to open. He
could not have got any very satisfactory answer, for the next thing I
saw was that he had sprung like lightning from his stolen pony, had
thrown his rifle to the ground, and was attacking a latticed window
with an old bayonet he had been carrying in his hand. With half a
dozen furious b