At noon we were hitting the muddy trail again for another Chinese compound. Evidently we were getting nearer the front; the flies and fleas were thicker here, a dead pig protruded from a puddle of water in the centre of the compound, and there were odors about of man and horse, that suggested a recent occupation by troops. We policed the filthy enclosure that afternoon, and quite late the thunder of big guns began far away, while a yellow flame darted from the unseen sun, spread two mighty saffron wings through the heavens, fitted them together from earth and sky, and left them poised motionless, while from them stole slowly out the rich green-and-gold radiance that comes only after rain—drenching wet earth and still trees and quiet seas of corn. By and by crickets chirped, quiet stars shone out above the yellow, and the dusk came with a great calm—but it was the calm that presaged the storm of Liao-Yang.
We had a serious consultation that night. The artists couldn't very well draw what they couldn't see. Some of us, not being military experts, and therefore dependent on mental pictures and incident for material, were equally helpless. Thus far the spoils of war had been battle-fields, empty trenches, a few wounded Japanese soldiers, and one Russian prisoner in a red shirt. So, hearing that General Oku feared for our safety, we sent him a round-robin relieving him of any responsibility on our account, and praying that we should be allowed to go closer to the fighting, or our occupation would be gone. Then we went to sleep.
The straw that broke the camel's back was added to the burden of the beast next morning. The final word came from General Oku, through a Guardsman, that the Russians were in flight, that there would probably be no decisive battle for some time and that if there should be, we were to be allowed no closer than four miles from the firing-line. Well, you cannot see, that far away, how men behave when they fight, are wounded, and die—and as all battles look alike at a long distance, there was nothing for some of us to do but go home. So, on a bright sunny morning, Richard Harding Davis, Melton Prior, the wild Irishman, and I sat alone in the last dirty compound, with the opening guns of Liao-Yang booming in the distance. I had sold Fuji to Guy Scull, and I wondered at the nerve of the man, for the price, though small, was big for Fuji. I pulled that vicious stallion's wayward forelock with malicious affection several times, and watched Scull curvet out on him to a more dangerous fate than any danger that war could hang over him. Away we went, then, Davis, Prior, and the Irishman on horseback—what became of his bicycle, I don't know to this day—on the backward trail of the war-dragon—for home. We went back through Haicheng, and spent a few hours in the same deserted compound that we had left only a few days before. Its silence was eloquent of the clash and clatter and storm of our ten days' imprisonment there. There we went to see General Fukushima, who with great alacrity gave us a pass back to Japan. He could not understand why all of us would have preferred to be at Port Arthur. It mystified him a good deal.
"General," said Dean Prior, "you promised me that I should go to Port Arthur." The General laughed.
"I tried to get you to stay for the third column," he said, and Prior was silent, whether from conviction or disgust, I don't know.
He wanted us to take a roundabout way to Newchwang, so that we would be always under Japanese protection. There were Chinese bandits, he said, along the short cut that we wanted to take, and there had been many murders and robberies along that road. Just the same, we took that road. So away we went, with carts, coolies, interpreters, and servants—they in the road and I stepping the ties of the Siberian Railway. One hundred yards ahead I saw two Japanese soldiers coming toward me on the track. When they saw me—they mistook me for a Russian, I suppose—they jumped from the track and ran back along the edge of a cornfield—disappearing every now and then. I was a little nervous, for I thought they might take a pot shot at me from a covert somewhere, but they were only dashing back to announce my coming to a squad of soldiers, and as I passed them on the track the major in command grinned slightly when he answered my salute.
We had a terrible pull that day through the mud, and we reached a Chinese village at dusk. The Irishman, with the subtle divination that is his only, found by instinct the best house in the town for us to stay. It had around it a garden full of flowers, clean mats and antique chairs within, and there was plenty of good cold water and nice fresh eggs. My last memory that night, as I lay on a cot under a mosquito-net, was of the Irishman and our aged host promenading up and down the garden-path. The Chinaman had never heard a word of English before in his life, but the Irishman was talking to him with perfect gravity and fluency about the war and about us, giving our histories, what we had done and what we had failed to do, and all the time the old Chinaman was bowing with equal gravity, and smiling as though not one word escaped his full comprehension. How the Irishman kept it up for so long, and why he kept it up for so long, I do not know, but they were strolling up and down when I went to sleep.
The next day we had another long pull through deeper mud. For hours and hours we went through solid walls of ten-foot corn; sometimes we were in mud and water above the knees. Once we got lost—anybody who followed that Irishman always got lost—and an old Chinaman led him and Davis and me for miles through marshy cornfields. Sometimes we would meet Chinamen bringing their wives and children back home—now that both armies had gone on ahead—the women in carts, their faces always averted, and the children dangling in baskets swung to either end of a bamboo pole, and carried by father or brother over one shoulder. By noon the kind old Chinaman connected us with our caravansary in another Chinese town. There the Irishman got eggs by laying a pebble and cackling like a hen, and the entire village gathered around us to watch us eat our lunch. They were all children from octogenarian down—simple, kindly, humorous, and with a spirit of accommodation and regard for the stranger that I have never seen outside of our Southern mountains. After lunch we took photographs of them, and of ourselves in turn with them, and the village policeman—he did not carry even a stick—was a wag and actor, and made beautiful poses while the village laughed in toto. This would not have been possible in a Japanese town. Nearly all of them followed us out of the village, and they seemed sorry to have us go.
Soon I tried a Chinese cart for a while, and in spite of its jolting I almost went to sleep. As I drowsed I heard a voice say: