"Poor fellows," he said, "they were trying to get in here to save their skins." At the barricade a few British soldiers, Durhams, stood by a machine-gun, and just outside, about fifty yards farther on, a hundred or more Northern soldiers sat about on the ground, their arms in a pile in front of them. Like school children they were waiting to be told what to do next. But there was no one to tell them. A few civilians, Japanese and European, had gathered around the barricade, and a good-looking young Jew in riding clothes came up to Mr. Jackson and began to tell him what had happened. "I came along just here like this and I say to myself, these boys are going to make a rush for it. There were some on the roofs firing into the street,--they are still there, better keep close to the wall. They came in a rush, and they scared the daylights out of me, I'll tell the world." But he moved on, leaving unexplained what a young Jew in riding clothes, without a horse, was doing in that galley. Mr. Jackson spoke to one of the young Durhams. The cornered Northern troops had tried to break into the Settlement for safety, so they had had to kill about sixteen of them. The rest had thrown down their arms. He himself was nineteen years old and had never been under fire before. His eyes were shining, his voice cracked a little, and when a Japanese wishing to hear pushed too near him, he kicked him violently away, not because he was brutal,--his face was that of a good-tempered child,--but because he was excited into a state bordering on exaltation. A car came along Range Road and with a sharp scream of brakes stopped at the barricade. It carried a Japanese flag and Japanese Marines on the running-board. A British car followed it. Three British officers, among them General Duncan's Chief-of-Staff, got out and walked through to where the Northern prisoners sat about waiting for something to happen. Fifteen or twenty Sikhs on horseback trotted along the road, at the end a magnificent one who rode thoughtfully, stroking his gray beard, deep in contemplation of some private matter, neither hurried nor indifferent but as obviously made for war as the Chinese are for peace. An ambulance came with great honking, for the road was becoming crowded. An army doctor and several hospital corpsmen got out and bent over the bodies. Over one who was alive they held a consultation. The Chief-of-Staff came back and gave orders for the road to be cleared. The Durhams began to push people along. As Megan turned, she saw one of the doctors light a cigarette and put it in the mouth of the Chinese soldier. She held back long enough to be sure that a faint breath of smoke drifted between his colorless lips. She walked along content that at least one of these hunted creatures had escaped, that in the midst of all this defeat she might identify herself with one tangible victory. [Illustration: Chapter VII headpiece] CHAPTER VII