HUMAN BARNACLES
Clinging to the bases of the forts, like barnacles to a ship, these sturdy Japanese existed in miserable quarters throughout the summer, fall and half the winter.
Sick with the thought that through this bloody angle, bought at so dear a cost, held at so terrible a price, there must yet be fought the supreme fight that will eventually reduce the citadel I turned to go. At the top of the downward trench I paused, kneeling, where three soldiers stood with rifles waiting to relieve the sentry on duty. Down through the plain swept the ten-mile front of the two armies—the might of Russia and the might of Japan, locked in a struggle so desperate there was no sound but the asthmatic wheeze of the ripsaw buzzing above. It was very close to the other world—yet the resources of two empires centered there, the heartthrobs of great people, raging like the wind in from two seas, swept it all into a typhoon of gore and grief.
I felt my hand clasped by a palm moist and gentle with feeling, friendly with comradeship. The eyes I looked into were not those of a beast of prey. They were quite pleasant eyes, even lovable. The face was touched with soil. I could see it came from the rice paddies, yet it had sympathy, and pity, and much capacity for happiness. Was there not also capacity for suffering? The low word came and he went off, food for powder. Will he be one of the twenty? The sun was quite as devilish as ever in the Dragon’s maw as he stepped into it. As I scrambled into safety I saw him propped against the wall, his rifle against a chink, his cheek to the breech, “sniping.” It was a salute and an appeal that he pressed into my hand, a reproach and a challenge. I was a white man, he a yellow, and he was killing white. What difference was there between us? Could I not also have found friends two hundred yards farther on? Still the ripsaw buzzed the knots. Again the machine gun rattled, without poetry, business-like and deadly.
“Tragique!” whispered D’Adda, as he came back from the same journey and sat beside me. “Zis ees zee focal point—most eentense, most sublime. Perhaps here Port Art will be taken—and by surprise. I know zee historee. I study Plevna, Sevastopol, Metz, Gibraltar, Vicksburg, Ladysmith. Always by surprise. Zee physical is but zee one aspect of zee situation. Zere are zee three aspect—zee physical, zee mental and zee moral. Zee moral aspect will be—what you call it? zee final decidence. When what you call zee psychologique mo-ment come—in zee wind, zee rain, zee storm, zee quick rush—zen zee high spirit go low—phwaat! like zat—zen Port Art fall. By a surprise. One sergeant he take Dalny, one private soldier he will take Port Art.”
We loiter along the parallel on our way back. The ripsaw strikes a knot above our heads and we shy to windward. D’Adda reminds me that once when Skoboleff, greatest of all Russian soldiers, thus ducked in giving way to a purely physical reflex action, he immediately leaped to the parapet, and walked along in full view of the enemy, until two members of his staff dragged him down as he sputtered out his disgust with himself.
We stop, winded. Again the ripsaw. Again the shrink. Then, content with what breath we have, fearful we may have no more, we hurry on, our knees sprung, our heads drawn in, like turtles slinking through the mud. We have no troops to encourage, no reputations to sustain. We are not Skoboleffs.
[Chapter Nine]
A BATTLE IN A STORM
