Grasping my double-barreled shotgun, I rose from the floor, where I had just thrown myself down, and stepped outside in front of the legation chapel. As I did so I heard the thunder of heavy guns in the direction of the Tungchow gate. Then the situation was clear. The relief were outside the city engaging the Chinese troops, and the automatic gun was not ours, but theirs.
I dropped on my knees in the roadway and put up a few words of thanksgiving to Almighty God, and then, rising, called out the good news to those inside the houses, in excited tones. Oh, the sweetness of those sounds! Shall I ever forget how delightful to our ears? How anxious I felt when they ceased for a few moments, and how happy when they were resumed!
The Chinese attacking us heard them too, and for a while somewhat slackened their fire to listen; but only for a while, for they kept up a hot fire all day.
Poor Mitchell, the brave American gunner, was wounded in the night, having his arm broken by a bullet from the Mongol market attack, but he smiled a grim smile when the guns were heard outside, and remarked: “Oh, you can keep up your devilish racket now, but in a little while longer you will be silent enough!”
SIKH POLICEMAN
The two Oriental types, East Indian and the Chinese, are plainly shown in this picture. The policeman looms up almost like a giant in the midst of his Celestial neighbors.
At about four o’clock the Americans on the wall saw men in foreign uniforms directly opposite them. While the Americans and Japanese had attacked the Tungchow stone road gate and the Pieu gate, the English had found the Shahkuo gate entirely open and unguarded, and had hastened, as directed by our notes of advice, to the water-gate, directly under the eastern extremity of the American position on the wall. The Sikhs came pouring up to the gate, which they soon smashed in, and then the hurrahs that rent the skies told those in the houses and in the hospital that the siege was over.
Just as the relief forces were pouring into the British legation, the first woman to be wounded during the siege, Mme. Cuillier, a French woman, was struck by a Mauser rifle bullet in the thigh and seriously, but not dangerously, wounded.