Directions were useless. Seeing nothing he could not tell whether firing came from friend or foe. He only knew that his way was down. So down he crawled. Bullets and shells passing over him became so common he lost all sense of them. By a terrible mistake—an error that cost twelve days of agony, for otherwise he might have traveled the few essential yards in a night—he missed the captured fort which marked the apex of the wedge driven into the Russian lines. And so his fearful, sublime crawl was for a thousand yards along the front of his own lines, into which at any time, had he turned straight along the face of the hill, he might have come and found sound legs and new, clear eyes. But down was his direction and down he went—a thousand yards in twelve nights. He found a few new dead with biscuit in their pockets and blood in their veins—this saved him.
So history repeats itself. Ten years ago—to the month—the Japanese lay without Port Arthur as they do to-day. Instead of Russians, Chinese were inside. But as the Japanese advanced along the western wall they suddenly at a bend in the way came upon ten bodies—no more—of their own comrades, stripped and mutilated, the heads grinning from pikes above. The Chinese had visited their own vengeance on successful enemies. But the act lost them Port Arthur. The Japanese became an army of fanatics, a tribe of solemn, righteous men, inflamed with the zeal of retribution, blazing with revenge, as did once that ancient civilization founded on the prophetic watchword, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” The next day Port Arthur fell. Those ten bodies cost the Chinese a province, a fortune and an island kingdom.
How will the Russians pay? I asked this of a certain Lieutenant-General, who told me some of the details I have just related. He raised his arm and pointed beyond the bombproof in which we sat to where the western harbor, with its magnificent Russian stone dwellings rising beyond could be plainly seen.
“We have a proverb in our country,” said he, “like this, ‘Once won, well won; twice won, never lost.’”
[Chapter Thirteen]
FROM KITTEN TO TIGER
Headquarters, Third Imperial Army, Before Port Arthur, Sept. 30th:—We went yesterday to the foremost firing line, where all the venom of war is concentrated in a score of yards among a dozen men. There we saw how the besiegers of Port Arthur are besieging it, how they live, what manner of men they are, and some of the facts of modern warfare which those who want to know about the humanity of science had better not read. Before we went an officer led us to a bombproof on the Japanese side of the great valley across which we were to go to gain the captured fort.
“Look!” said he, turning over his hyposcope, “the way is about a mile and a half. The real danger is in the fort itself, but if you are very careful to crawl with your heads low you are safe. If you decide to go you must relieve our authorities from all responsibility for your lives.”