But behind him were Chinese, and ponies and carts ridden or driven
with recklessness that was amazing. The English youth had started
gasping exclamations as he ran in, and tried to fetch his breath, when
from the back of the Austrian Legation came a rapid roll of musketry.
Austrian marines, who were spread-eagled along the roofs of their
Legation residences, and on the top of the high surrounding wall, had
evidently caught sight of the edge of an advancing storm, and were
firing fiercely. We seized our rifles--everybody has been armed
_cap-a-pie_ for days--and in a disorderly crowd we ran down to the end
of the great wall surrounding the Austrian compounds to view the broad
street which runs towards the city gates. The firing ceased as
suddenly as it had begun, and in its place arose a perfect storm of
distant roaring and shouting. Soon we could see flames shooting up not
more than half a mile from where we stood; but the intervening houses
and trees, the din and the excitement, coupled with the stern order of
an Austrian officer, shouted from the top of an outhouse, not to move
as their machine-gun was coming into action over our heads, made it
impossible for us to understand or move forward. What was it?

Presently somebody trotted up from behind us on a pony, and, waiting
his opportunity, rode into the open, and with considerable skill
seized a fleeing Chinaman by the neck. This prisoner was dragged in
more dead than alive with fear, and he told us that all he knew was
that as he had passed into the Tartar city through the Ha-ta Gate a
quarter of an hour before, myriads of Boxers--those were his
words--armed with swords and spears, and with their red sashes and
insignia openly worn, had rushed into the Tartar city from the Chinese
city, slashing and stabbing at everyone indiscriminately. The
foreigners' guns had caught them, he said, and dusted them badly, and