June 30. At night there was a very heavy thunderstorm, the first of the rainy season. Simultaneously with the thunder, the Chinese started a terrific fusillade from all quarters. The hideous noise, with the vivid flashes of lightning and the torrents of rain, produced an effect on the minds of all who witnessed it that they will probably never forget. July 1. The Americans and Germans were forced by heavy shell-fire to leave the wall. Later in the day the Americans returned, but the Germans did not. The Chinese were quiet at night, there being hardly any firing at all. The reason for this was supposed to be temporary shortness of ammunition. At night a good many people believed they saw flashes from an electric search-light, which was supposed to be with the troops at Tungchow. They claimed to have seen at first forty flashes, then an interval, followed by eight more. This they supposed to be some kind of a signal to us, but since it has all turned out to be heat lightning. Ed. Wagner, one of the customs men, was struck and killed in the French legation by a shell. July 2. It rained at night, and no flashlights (?) were seen. July 3. The Chinese on the wall had built up their barricade so high during the night that it almost overlooked our own (the two were only forty yards apart), and had they been able to build a little higher they might easily have fired right down on our men, so that it became a question of rushing the Chinese barricade or of leaving the wall. The former course was adopted. At 3 A.M., fifteen United States marines, fifteen Russian sailors, and twenty-five British marines, led by Captain John Myers, in the blackest part of the night, crept silently over the American barricade, and, dividing into two parties, each keeping close to either side of the wall battlements, advanced rapidly right up to the face of the Chinese barricade undiscovered. Arrived here, as agreed, they gave a tremendous yell, and swarmed over and around the barricade, yelling and firing volleys into the astonished Celestials, who, taken entirely by surprise by the yelling foreign devils, made very little resistance, and speedily fled to their second line of defense, some distance westward toward the Chien Men.