THE ATTACKS RESUMED
12th August, 1900.
...
All thoughts of relief have been pushed into the middle distance—and even beyond—by the urgent business we have now on hand. For the attacks have been suddenly resumed, and have been continuous, well sustained, and far worse than anything we have ever experienced before, even in the first furious days of the siege. What stupendous quantities of ammunition have been loosed off on us during the past forty-eight hours—what tons of lead and nickel! Some of our barricades have been so eaten away by this fire, that there is but little left, and we are forced to lie prone on the ground hour after hour, not daring to move and not daring to send reliefs at the appointed intervals. So intense has the rifle-fire been around the Su Wang-fu and the French Legation lines, that high above the deafening roar of battle a distinct and ominous snake-like hissing can be heard—a hiss, hiss, hiss, that never ceases. It is the high-velocity nickel-nosed bullet tearing through the air at lightning speed, and spitting with rage at its ill success in driving home on some unfortunate wretch. They hiss, hiss, hiss, hour after hour, without stopping; and as undertone to that brutal hiss there is the roll of the rifles themselves, crackling at us by the thousand like dry fagots. At first this storm of sound paralyses you a little; then a lust for battle gains you, and you steadily drive bullets through the Chinese loopholes in the hope of finding a Chinese face. Whenever they bunch and press forward we wither them to pieces.... But men are falling on our side more rapidly than we care to think—one rolled over on top of me two hours ago drilled through and through—and if anything should happen to the relieving columns and delay their arrival for only two or three days, this tornado of fire will have swept all our defenders into the hospitals. The Chinese guns are also booming again, and shrapnel and segment are tearing down trees and outhouses, bursting through walls, splintering roofs, and wrecking our strongest defences more and more. Just now one of our few remaining ponies was struck, and it was a pitiable sight, giving a bloody illustration of the deadly force of shell-fragments. The piece that struck this poor animal was not very big, but still it simply tore into his flank, and seemed to burst him in two. With his entrails hanging out and his agonised eyes mutely protesting, the pony staggered and fell. Then we despatched him with our rifles.
Our casualty list has now passed the two hundred mark, they say. In a few days more, fifty per cent. of the total force of active combatants will have been either killed or wounded.
During the lulls which occur between the attacks, when the Chinese soldiery are probably coolly refreshing themselves with tea and pipes and hauling away those who have succumbed, we hear from the north of the city the same dull booming of big guns, continuous, relentless, and never-tiring. It is the sound of the Chinese artillery ranged against the great fortified Roman Catholic Cathedral. When we have a few moments we can well picture to ourselves this valiant Bishop F——, with cross in hand, like some old-time warrior-priest, pointing to the enemy, and urging his spear-armed flocks to stand firm along the outer rim. We can also see, in the smoke and dust, the thin fringe of sailors who must be forming the mainstay of the defence. Perhaps, sprinkled along the compound walls, with harsh-speaking rifles in their hands, they are a sort of human incense, exorcising by their mere presence the devils in pagan hearts....
Scant time for thoughts; none for recording, as each hour shows more clearly what we may expect. Scarcely has the fire been stilled in one quarter than it breaks out with even greater violence in another, and we are hurried in small reinforcements from point to point. And from the positions on the Tartar Wall, which are now also dusted by a continually growing fire that would sweep our men off in a cloud of sandbags and brick-chips, the enemy's attacks can be best understood. The growing number of rifles being brought to bear on us; the violence and increasing audacity; the building of new barricades that press closer and closer to our own, and are now so near that they almost crush in our chests—are all clear from the reports sent down. The relief columns on the Tientsin road are driving in unwieldy Chinese forces on top of us, and this native soldiery is falling back on the capital to be remarshalled after a fashion—placed on the city walls or flung against us in a despairing attempt to kill us all, and remove the Thing which is making the relieving columns advance so quickly. Crazy with fear, and with ghosts of the chastisement of 1860 etched on every column of dust raised by their retreating soldiery, the Chinese Government is acting like one possessed.
To-day I saw it all beautifully, with the aid of the best glasses we have got. First came bodies of infantry trotting hurriedly in their sandals and glancing about them. In the dust and the distance they seemed to have lost all formation—to be mere broken fragments. But once a man stopped, looked up at us, a mere dot in the ruined streets hundreds and hundreds of yards away, and then savagely discharged his rifle at us. He knew we were on the Tartar Wall, and so sent his impotent curses at us through a three-foot steel tube.... Behind such men were long country carts laden with wounded and broken men, and driven by savage-looking drivers, powdered with our cursed dust and driving standing up with voice and whip alone. The teams of ponies were all mud-stained and tired, and moved very slowly away; and their great iron-hooped wheels clanked discordantly over the stone-paved ways. Sometimes a body of cavalry, with gaudy banners in the van and the men flogging on their steeds with short whips, have also ridden by escaping from the rout. Infantry and horsemen, wounded in carts and wounded on foot, flow back into the city through the deserted and terror-stricken streets, and it is we who shall suffer. So much of this has been understood by everybody, that an order has been privately given that no one is to be allowed on the Tartar Wall, excepting the regular reliefs. There is in any case no time for most of us to creep up there and look on the city below; we are tied to the barricades and trenches down in the flat among the ruins, chained to our posts by a never-ending rifle-fire.