our way back I had secured that our carts
could not be stampeded with ease. The drivers would make them go on;
it would be easier to run forward than to turn back.

Then, as if we realised the danger of the road, we began driving
frantically. We wished to carry the carts into safety. It was not long
before we saw in the distance many groups of people clustering round a
big building surrounded by high walls. That made me nervous, for the
groups formed and dissolved continually, as if they were in doubt, and
seeking to gain something which was bent on resisting. But no sooner
had they seen this than my men began laughing coarsely, and exclaimed
in the vernacular that it was a pawn-shop which the common people were
trying to loot. Of course, it was certain that every pawn-shop would
go sooner or later; but the sight of an actual attack in progress
seemed strange while the populace was still so terror-stricken. To our
further surprise, on coming up we found that a number of marauders and
stragglers belonging to a variety of European corps had been halted
by this sight; and as we drew nearer we found a private of the French
Infanterie Coloniale groaning on the ground, with a ghastly wound in
his leg. No one was attending to him--they were too busy with their
own business, and had we not tied him roughly with some cloth and
rope, he might have lain there bleeding to death. We carried the man
to the carts and decided we would take him to safety. But as we made
preparations to start a warning shout in French bade us not to pass in
front of the pawn-shop gates, and, looking up, I found that several
other French soldiers, together with some Indians and Annamites, had
climbed the roofs of adjacent houses, and with their rifles thrown out
in front of them, were attempting to get a shot at people inside. The
place was evidently securely held and refused to surrender. Grouped
all round, and armed with choppers, bars of iron and long poles, the
crowd of native rapscallions waited in a grim silence for the
_denouement_. It was an extraordinary scene. Everything and everyone
was so silent. I decided to stop and see it through. Such things never
happen twice in a lifetime.

A shot fired from the gate at an incautious man, who darted across the
street, showed that the defenders were both vigilant and desperate,
and knew what to expect at the hands of the foreign soldiery and the
populace once they poured in. Spurred by this sound, the F