There would be no more digging. Any one might see that. The Russian battery had again found them. One of the guns was exploding shrapnel over their heads. The rest were trying for the thin blue line further back. The willows which yet hid the army were too far away. The moment was ripe. Hoshiko threw aside the spade and everything else which might impede action, and went toward the battery.
From behind her rose the hoarse mongolian yell she had learned to love. There was no need now for concealment. Their own guns had located the battery in her front. A wicked shell had just burst over it. She could hear the song of the fragments. And but three men stood by the gun afterward. The little figure with the sun-flag raced down upon them, firing. It was quite alone. The three gave her a weak, magnanimous cheer and retired, leaving their gun.
Her own men answered from the rear. And even amid the "Banzais" she could hear the wild song of Arisuga. One line clanged in her mad brain:—
"Death-wound spurting—"
Further up the hill a single rapid-fire gun which knew her only as an enemy came into action. It found her at once and riddled her with bullets, as, flag in hand, she leaped into the first of the Russian trenches.
That line was in her last articulate consciousness:—
"Death-wound spurting—"
Perhaps it only remained in her ears—Arisuga's song. But she fancied that she could feel her own warm blood spurting into her own face. Was it as glorious as he had thought it? Or was it only terrible? At that moment, first, she knew. Perhaps she became in that last instant all woman once more. Perhaps she saw something not for mortal eyes. Perhaps she was not as brave with death as she had taught herself to be—gentle Hoshiko! Her lips moaned, piteously, when she ought to have been dead, "Arisuga!"
So that one of the two who had gone forward with her bent hastily and said to the other, with a pleasant smile:—
"He speaks his own name!"