'Go? You must go; if you don't you will make him an enemy for ever. He will put you face downwards and deprive you of the possibility of seeing and collecting the valuable historical material which you are getting,' said the experienced and canny ones. I bowed to the wisdom of this, and went and did as I was advised. In the evening I called on the Commandant. For some time he had been very ill with dysentery, and for the last two days had been told by the doctor that he was on no account to ride. He certainly seemed to be very much thinner than before. The following Order was issued by General Stössel on the 31st: 'On the night of the 29th and 30th a sortie and an attack on No. 2 Redoubt was again made by the scouts and sailors. The former dashed into the trenches, but the sailors did not do all that was expected of them, and so the attack was unsuccessful and the loss of life wasted. No more such attacks are to be made without my personal sanction on each occasion. Similar sorties would be better carried out under the command of a man like the Chief of the Fortress Staff, who is thoroughly acquainted with the locality.' With the final capture of Nos. 1 and 2 Redoubts by the Japanese--their greatest success during the month--they gained an enormous advantage. They at once constructed trenches back from both of them, which was, of course, an easier operation than throwing them forward under the gun-fire of our batteries. The Commandant considered it absolutely essential to organize sorties against them, but General Stössel, by every means in his power, opposed this. The series of assaults culminating on the 23rd of this month were so bloody and had such a great influence on the course of the defence, that they are worthy of further description. It had been evident on the 21st, 22nd and 23rd that the Japanese were preparing to deliver the final blow by a general attack. Our difficulty, in the absence of balloons, was to ascertain where that blow would fall along the extensive front. Chinese reports were quite untrustworthy, and we could not see enough from any of the positions to judge where the enemy was concentrating. The standing kiaoling, the ravines and roughness of the ground greatly assisted the concealment of their movements. On the evening of the 23rd the Commandant, after long and careful inspection of the enemy's positions, ordered the last battalion of the 14th Regiment to Eagle's Nest. This left a main reserve, only two companies strong, under Quail Hill, to cover the valley of the Lun-ho. Two companies! all the rest had been sucked up into the firing-line. He then sent orders to Admiral Wiren to be ready to land a detachment of 800 men from the ships at anchor to form a reserve. It was now 7 p.m., and the darker it got the more silent became the line of front, and the more tense our expectancy. [Illustration: THE ASSAULT REPULSED.]