At 11.80 am, the writer went on to a roof and observed some movement of troops to the east, and at exactly 11.45 the first shots were fired. For one and a half hours the fight kept up. At first, the robbers seemed to get the best of the defenders, who fell back almost to the old yamen on the outskirts of the town, and then of a sudden the robbers wore driven back on to the plain. Then from my roof observed a further batch of Nationalist troops advance right up over the naked plain and all the time the robbers were a quarter-mile in front. With this help, the defenders drove back the enemy, but once more Lau's band swept forward and this time all seemed to be for shots wore heard in the street on this side of the yamen. Presently, the enemy were observed to be on the run toward Kotak and this time the Nationalists kept them going for a mile or so, but, owing to the smallness of their numbers, they dare not advance further.
Now, one would think that, with hours of continuous firing, and with some hundred men on each side, fighting on the open level plain, certainly a goodly number must have been killed and wounded, but nothing of the kind happened. Not one Nationalist soldier was Killed, and only one officer killed and one wounded! Several of the robber band appear to have been killed and five were taken prisoners jand shot-on the spot. Less than ten wounded were brought back to the city after the fighting was over.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.