and banditti, sometimes in groups, sometimes singly, still chased them
and cut them down. Numbers had already been massacred, and several
lanes looked like veritable shambles. The stench of human blood in the
hot June air was almost intolerable, and the sights more than we could
bear. Men, women and children lay indiscriminately heaped together,
some hacked to pieces, others with their throats cut from ear to ear,
some still moving, others quite motionless.

Gradually we collected an ever-growing mob of terror stricken people
who had escaped this massacre. Some of the girls seemed quite
paralysed with fear; others were apparently temporarily bereft and
kept on shrieking with a persistency that was maddening. A young
French sailor who did not look more than seventeen, and was splashed
all over with blood from having fallen in one of the worst places,
kept striking them two and three at a time, and cursing them in fluent
Breton, in the hope of bringing them to reason. "_Eh bien, mes belles!
Vous ne finissez pas_," he ended despairingly, and rushed off again to
see whether he could find any more.

The blood was rising to our men's heads badly by now, and I saw
several who could stand it no longer stabbing at the few dead Boxers
we had secured. We had none of us imagined we were coming to such
scenes as these; for nobody would have believed that such brutal
things were possible. When we judged we had finished rescuing every
one alive, a man in the most pitiable condition ran out from behind
the smouldering cathedral carrying a newly severed human head in
either hand. He seemed but little abashed when he saw us, but came
forward rapidly enough towards us, glancing the while over his
shoulder. Several sailors were rushing at him with their bayonets,
ready to spit him, when he fell on his knees, and, tearing open his