At the foot a regiment is drawn along the road, the men squatting on their heels, ponchos over heads, their rifle barrels, brass-capped, peeping from the corners. I make for the valley.
Seeking a trench where I have been before, between the lines of fire, I hurry for the village of Shuishiying, the location two days before of our outposts. No living thing is to be seen, but overhead the big bullets crash from behind and lumber in from the front. Down here between the two lines of batteries the way grows long, the village distant, the desire to return manifold. The artillery of two armies centers on me; not a pleasant sensation! Not on me, of course, but I am not a Christian Scientist—nor yet a veteran! It gets on my nerves. I turn back. Then through the dark I feel a file of soldiers near and go on.
Starting at every sound, in the purest darkness, not knowing whether we or the enemy occupy the village, and yet so far by this time I cannot return, I enter the village. A dull light around the first corner shows me the headquarters of the infantry line officers commanding the reserves—a place I had been two days before. I go up. Only a sergeant is there answering the telephone.
“My friends? Where?”
He waves an arm toward the front. I tumble out of the village and there are the advanced reserves drawn up, squatting on heels, poncho-covered, rifles uncapped. A movement is beginning. I fall in with the young lieutenant I know. The regiment quickly breaks into charging formation—squads of twelve, and deploys single file into the mealie fields to the left. I am discovered, ordered to the rear. I protest. The sentry orders arms, bayonets fixed. I go—back. The regiment goes—ahead.
But why be foiled? Why come halfway round the globe to be turned back at the summit? There is another way—to the right. I hurry along it as day begins to break. The mists are heavy, the rain drizzling, the first light struggling. I find the conical hill in the center of the plain, quite detached from the fortress proper, taken by our troops the day before and called the Kuropatkin battery. I struggle through battered abattis and entanglement for the elevation. The foss is filled with water—the only moat before Port Arthur that has the traditional morass. The place is deserted and if I can reach the front trench the whole action will lie before me like a chessboard. Across the parapet lies a line sergeant, his head gone. There has been no time for the dead. The trail is thick with khaki bodies. Picking my way slowly forward, halting at each yard to be sure that I am not in range of the musketry whose wild rattle is now filling the air, I at length find myself near a bombproof partially splintered by shells. The plain now luminous, I pause for rest and safety, the din not lessening.
But no sooner do I look around than I scramble quickly on—into danger. Two figures are rigid there in the half-light of the bombproof, one in khaki uniform, one in blue blouse and marengo pants. The one in khaki has his teeth in the throat of the other, whose eyes, popped like peas from the pod, peer over, rakishly curious, at his limp hand dropped over the khaki back and holding a pistol. The khaki hip is drenched with blood, partially dried. The sun is come and gone and is now here again since that happened. The faces are ghastly with bloat. I leave the half-light of the shelter and go out where bullets are.
The star bombs cease, the searchlights die away, the artillery flags, the infantry grows noisier. Then I see the reserves falling back, the squads of twelve escaping from one terrace to another, in good formation, continually firing, but still falling back. This Kuropatkin battery may see other dramas like the bombproof duel. I hasten down. In the village I find the lieutenant busy with trenches, improvising the defense. He throws all his English at me as I come up: