e town on descending from White
Boulders.

A frightful scene was before me. I have said that the land by which I
had come out on the lake inclined steeply upwards, and the water was
about fifteen feet below me when I arrived in sight of it. It was
surrounded by crowds of Japanese soldiers, who had driven large
numbers of the fugitives into the water, and were firing on them from
every side, and driving back with the bayonet those who attempted to
struggle out. The dead floated on the water, which was reddened with
blood. The soldiers, yelling and laughing with vengeful glee, seemed
to gloat over the agonies of their victims. It was fearful to see
those gory forms struggling in the agitated water, those who still
lived endeavouring to extricate themselves from the mass of corpses,
falling fast, but often rising again with their last energies,
streaming with water and blood, and uttering piteous cries and appeals
for mercy, which were mocked by the fiends around them. Many women
were amongst them; one I noticed carrying a little child, which,
struggling forward, she held up to the soldiers as if in appeal. As
she reached the bank, one of the wretches struck her through with his
bayonet, and with a second stroke as she fell transfixed the child,
which might have been two years old, and held its little body aloft.
The woman rose and made a wild effort to regain the child, but
evidently exhausted and dying, fell back again into the water. Her
body--and in fact it was done with everybody that came within
reach--was hacked in pieces. Fresh batches of victims were being
driven in, until there threatened soon to be no room in the water for
any more. I could bear the spectacle no longer, but turned and fled
from the ghastly spot.

I now knew my whereabouts, and once more set out for the inn, along
the line from which I had strayed. Heaps of dead and spectacles of
murder were continually presenting themselves. In one place I saw some
ten or twelve soldiers with a number of unfortunates whom they had
tied back to back in a batch. With volley after volley they despatched
them, and proceeded to mutilate their bodies in the usual horrible
fashion. Nobody was spared, man, woman, or child, that I could see.
The Chinese appeared to offer no resistance. Many of them prostrated
themselves on the ground before the butchers with abject submission,
and were shot or stabbed in that posture.

I was now to have a close shave. I came suddenly