From half a dozen of them.
And they broke into the song: hoarse, iron, clanging, mongolian! Within the six notes of the old Japanese scale!
(Do not be surprised at this. The Japanese army is full of poets. Indeed, the Japanese land is full of them. They will spin you a complete comedy or tragedy between seventeen or thirty-seven syllables. And, to practise poetry is not there as here, heinous to one's friends. I know of a gunner who sat cross-legged under his gun behind Poutuloff and wrote a poem concerning The-Moon-in-a-Moat. It was finished as the Russians got his range and dropped a covey of shrapnel upon him. After the smoke cleared they found him dead. And he is forgotten. But his poem was also found and lived on.)
This was "The Great Death" of Shijiro Arisuga.
| "Yell of metal, |
| Strake of flame! |
| Death-wound spurting |
| In my face! |
| Hail Red Death!" |
"Banzai!" cried Jokichi.
"Teikoku Banzai!" yelled Asami.
And, after the tumult, Yasuki, the reserved, himself said:—
"By Shaka, it is the very Yamato Damashii itself! The spirit of young Japan."
"Nippon Denji!" laughed jolly Kitsushima.