The day advanced. From the warships in the harbour the bugle‐calls rang out merrily in the morning air, answered by the brazen clangour of the trumpets of the Royal Artillery ashore. The rattle of musketry came from the rifle‐ranges, where squads of marines were firing. Along the sea‐front tramped a guard of the Chinese Regiment. Clad in khaki with blue putties and straw hats, they marched with a soldierly swing to the Queen’s House, climbed the steps, and disappeared in the gateway. Coolies laboured at the new fortifications. Boats shot out from the pier and headed for the warships. Volumes of dense black smoke poured from the chimneys of the condensing works—for no water fit for drinking is found on the island. A cruiser steamed out from her moorings to gun‐practice in the bay. And hour after hour we waited for the coming of the Health Officer, who alone could allow us to land. But, instead, the Transport Officer arrived, bearing orders for the ship to start at once for Taku. And so, with never a chance for us to go ashore, the anchor rumbled up and out we headed by the eastern passage. As we steamed out to sea we passed the tiny Sun Island, merely a deserted fort, still showing how cruelly battered and torn it had been by the Japanese shells. Round the steep north side of the island we swung and shaped our course for Taku in the track of the Allied Fleets that had swept in vengeful haste over those same waters to the merited punishment of China. All that day we passed along a rocky and mountainous coast and in among islands of strange and fantastic shape. Here an elephant, there a lion, carved in stone lay in slumber on the placid sea. Yonder a camel reposed in Nirvana‐like abstraction. On one islet, the only sign of life or human habitation we saw, stood a lighthouse, like unto lighthouses all the world over.