The 28th passed fairly quietly, with unimportant gun-fire, as did the 29th. On the night of the 29th our communications behind the main line were heavily shelled. During the preceding three days the gendarmes buried 700 Japanese dead in front of our north-east positions. This was done under fire. In the evening of the 29th the enemy entrenched near Water Supply Redoubt, and we temporarily recaptured part of No. 2 Redoubt by a sortie.
That evening, Prince Mickeladsey informed me that he was sending a post to St. Petersburg, and that I could send a telegram. He added: 'But don't talk of it, for if it is known, —— will at once hear of it.'
I wrote out two identical telegrams—one to a relative in St. Petersburg, and one to a friend:
'Arthur is enabled to hold out only by the efforts of Smirnoff and his excellent assistant Kondratenko.... When I can give you details your hair will stand on end. Tell the Tsar this, for it is absolutely necessary that —— should be removed.'
The Prince sent off these telegrams in a special letter with the official stamp, and in a separate packet, addressed to our consul in Chifu. The latter duly received them, but in spite of Prince Mickeladsey's request to despatch my wires to their destination, he never sent them, and gave as his excuse that they would have discredited a great name. He did this notwithstanding the fact that they were enclosed in a letter from the Chief of the Gendarmes in Port Arthur. Nor did he even consider it his duty to report the circumstances to his superiors, although he might have known that there is never smoke without fire. At the end of the siege, when I reached Chifu on the Rastoropny, on board of which I had been sent from Port Arthur, with the knowledge and by the direction of the Commandant and all the Admirals 'as an officer of the Fortress' (Stössel wished, as he expressed it, to 'abolish' me), the consul received a telegram from Port Arthur to the effect that I was a Japanese spy. He accordingly went to all the officers in authority and did everything he could to procure my arrest, and I was only saved by the intervention of the Chinese Governor, who declared that he would send an armed guard to protect me.
On August 30 a shell from one of the batteries blew up a Japanese magazine on the eastern front. General Biely at once gave orders for the battery to pour in a still hotter fire on to the magazine. As far as we could see the shells fell splendidly, preventing the enemy from saving the material, for groups of men could be seen running about in every direction, but at a considerable distance. To the left of Orphan Hill a big-gun battery was brought up by them, but it was very effectively fired on by one of our coast batteries. On the same day General Stössel published the following District Order:
'I have to-day had the honour to receive a telegram from the Tsar to the following effect: "To-day being the christening day of the Heir to the Throne, I appoint you and Colonel Semenoff, commanding the 26th East Siberian Rifle Regiment, to be my Aides-de-camp."'[23]
The following is what the late Colonel Raschevsky thought of this: 'We are all delighted with the latter appointment which is most just (the appointment of Semenoff as A.D.C.), but that Stössel should have received this honour is a proof of how often those in authority are rewarded for the deeds of others.'
By twelve noon all the official world in Arthur was on their way to congratulate the newly appointed A.D.C. I did not wish to go, but was persuaded that it was necessary.
'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.