I paused to consider my situation. I had passed
round by the water-side until outside the dock basin, and then turned
into the streets, striking across in the direction of the inn, with
the route from which to the East Port I was well enough acquainted.
There was a rush and hurry of fugitives all around me, and now for the
first time I saw the Japanese soldiers in pursuit, pressing on the
fleeing throng, and using rifle and bayonet furiously on all and
sundry, stabbing and hacking fiendishly at those who fell. I was
knocked down in the rush and trampled upon, and it was some time
before I could rise. A Japanese soldier was near me as I staggered to
my feet, and took aim at me with his rifle. The barrel was within a
foot of me, and I struck it aside just in time to escape getting a
bullet through my body. I had no weapon but those of nature, but in
their use I was, like most of the Anglo-Saxon breed, something of an
artist, and before the Jap could recover his piece I gave him a good,
straight, British right-hander between the eyes, which sent him down
like a nine-pin. In all human probability it was the first sample of
the article that had ever come under his notice; he was clearly unused
to the method of attack, and lay quite flat as if to think it over,
whilst I retreated as fast as my legs could carry me. I resolved to
hold on for the inn, thinking that if I succeeded in reaching it, I
should be comparatively safe, as perhaps the outbreak of fury might
confine itself to the streets. I knew, too, that I had not much
farther to go. I made little progress, nevertheless, being frequently
turned out of the road by the necessity of avoiding the soldiers, who
were spreading fast across the town, shooting down all whom they
encountered. One began to stumble over corpses in nearly every street,
and the risk of encountering parties of the murderers increased, every
minute. Again and again I came into the midst of the work of butchery,
and every now and then ran the gauntlet of a flight of bullets fired
down the narrow avenues. At length I lost my way completely, and
wandered about through the pandemonium around, thinking that each
minute would be my last. At length, in emerging from a dark lane
leading up an ascent, I came upon a sheet of water. I immediately
recognized it as a large shallow fresh-water lake in the rear of the
dock basin, and it thus appeared that I had strayed back nearly to the
point where I had re-entered th