I awoke at eleven in the morning sick as a beaten dog. The sun beating hotly down, and a fierce ray had found its way through the branches of my protecting tree and had been burning the back of my neck. The Eastern sun is a brute; when it strikes you long in a tender spot, it can make you sicker than anything I know of. Arousing ourselves, we got up all of us gruntingly; reposted the sentries; drank some black tea; made a faint pretence at washing; and finding all dead quiet and not a trace of the enemy, sauntered off for news. Not a word anywhere, not a sound, not a message. Everybody was standing about in uneasy groups, from the French and German lines to the northern outposts of the British Legation. Where the devil were our relieving columns? From the Tartar Wall we scanned the horizon with our glasses. Not a soul afoot--nothing. Was all the world still asleep, tired from the night's debauch, or was it merely the end of everything? As time went on, and the silence around us was uninterrupted, we became more and more nervous. In place of the storm of fire which had been raging for so many hours this unbroken calm was terrible; for far worse than all the tortures in the world is the one of a solitary silent confinement. At one o'clock I could stand it no longer. Getting leave to take out a skirmishing party, I called for volunteer and got six men and two Chinese scouts. At half-past one we slid over the Eastern Su wang-fu barricades--near where the messengers are sent from--and scurried forward into the contested territory beyond. Working cautiously in a long line, we beat the ground thoroughly; approached the enemy's flanking barricades; peered over in some trepidation, and found the Chinese riflemen gone. Every soul had fled. Something had most certainly happened somewhere. This quiet was becoming more and more eloquent.... We abandoned our cover, and boldly taking to the brick-littered street, climbed over fortifications which had shut us in for so long. Not a sound or a living thing. On the ground, however, there were many grim evidences of the struggle which had been so long proceeding. Skulls picked clean by crows and dogs and the dead bodies of the scavenger-dogs themselves dotted the ground; in other places were pathetic wisps of pigtails half covered with rubbish, broken rifles, rusted swords, heaps of brass cartridges--all proclaiming the bitterness with which the warfare had been waged in this small corner alone. Eagerly gazing about us, we slowly pushed on, drinking in all these details with eager eyes. How sweet it is to be an escaped prisoner even for a few short minutes!