Mines went off in different localities, swallowing up people and bits of wall. In the gulf made by one of them fifty little babies in their cradles disappeared. Their sufferings at least were over. Each time a new breach was made the Boxers threw themselves upon it, and it became a yawning opportunity for torture and death. But Ensign Henry was always there; with such of his sailors as had been spared he was seen rushing to the place where he was needed, to the exact spot where the most effective work could be done,--on a roof or on the crest of a wall,--and they killed and they killed, without losing a ball, every shot dealing death. Fifty, a hundred of them, crouched in heaps on the ground; priests and Chinese women, as well as men, brought stones, bricks, marble, no matter what, from the cathedral, and with the mortar they had ready they closed the breach and were saved again until the next mine exploded! But they came to the end of their strength, the meagre ration of soup grew less and less, and they could do no more. The bodies of Boxers, piled up along the vast enclosure which they so desperately defended, filled the air with a pestilential odor; dogs were attracted and gathered in moments of calm for a meal. During the latter part of the time they killed these dogs from the tops of the walls and pulled them in by means of a hook at the end of a cord, and their meat was saved for the sick and for nursing mothers. On the day when our soldiers at last entered the place, guided by the white-haired bishop standing on the wall and waving the French flag, on the day when they threw themselves with tears of joy in one another's arms, there remained just enough food to make, with the addition of many leaves, one last meal. "It seemed," said Monsignor Favier, "as though Providence had counted the grains of rice." Then he spoke once more of Ensign Henry. "The only time during the entire siege," he said, "the only time we wept was when he died. He remained on his feet giving his orders, although mortally wounded in two places. When the fight was over he came down from the breach and fell exhausted in the arms of two of the priests; then we all wept with the sailors, who had come up and surrounded him. He was so charming, simple, good, and gentle with even the humblest. To be a soldier such as he was, to make yourself loved like a little child, could there be anything more beautiful?" Then after a silence he added, "And he had faith; every morning he used to come with us to prayers and to communion, saying with a smile, 'One must be always ready.'"