The storm went from bad to worse; it seemed impossible to complete the landing, neither could the men go back to the transports. The only thing possible was to trust to the mercy of winds and waves, jump into the water and struggle for the shore as soon as the boats came near. The experience of my friend Captain Tsukudo is an illustration of the extreme difficulty of landing.
Captain Tsukudo, with over sixty men under his care, was in a boat, which was towed away from the transport by a small launch. His boat rolled in the waves like a ball and was in constant danger of being swallowed in the vortex. The tug cast off her tow and fled for safety. The gigantic ho[27] which sweeps through ten thousand miles without rest, even his wings are said to be broken by the waves of the sea. Much less could a small boat stand the force of such waves. It seemed as if the bravest of men had no other choice than being “buried in the stomachs of fishes.” Rescue seemed impossible. Heaven’s decree they must obey. Death they were ready for, but to die and become refuse of the sea, without having struck one blow at the enemy now close at hand, was something too hard for them to bear. With bloodshot eyes and hair on end, the captain tried in every way to save his men, but alas! they were like a man that falls into an old well in the midst of a lonely meadow, not sinking, yet not able to climb up—the root of the vine that he clings to as a life rope being gnawed by a wild rat!
Captain Tsukudo jumped into the sea and swam toward the shore with all his might; but the waves were too relentless to yield to his impatient and impetuous desire to rescue his men. They swallowed him, vomited him, tossed and hurled him without mercy; the brave captain was at last exhausted and fainted away before reaching the shore. Heaven, however, did not give up his case; he was picked up on the beach, and when he recovered consciousness he found himself perfectly naked. Without waiting to dress, he ran to the headquarters of the landing forces, and with frantic gestures asked for help for the men in his boat; he could not weep, for tears were dried up; he could not speak, for his mouth was parched, but he succeeded in getting his men saved.
Another boat loaded with baggage and horses capsized; one of the poor animals swam away toward the offing. The soldier in charge of the horse also swam to catch the animal. Before he reached it, the steed went down and soon afterward the faithful man also disappeared in the billows. Poor, brave soul! his love of his four-legged charge was stronger even than that of the stork who cries after its young in the lonesome night. Though he did not face the enemy’s bullets, he died a pioneer’s death on the battle-field of duty.
Was the Canaan of our hopes the country that we had pictured to ourselves? Contrary to our expectations, it did not look at all like a place our brethren had bought with their blood ten years before. It was simply a desolate wilderness, a deserted sand-plain, a boundless expanse of rolling country, a monotonous insipid canvas, with dark red and light gray all over. Compared with the detailed, variegated picture of Japan that we had been accustomed to, what a sense of untouched and unfinished carelessness! What a change of scene to see hundreds of natives swarm to the spot of our landing, with horses and wagons, to get their job! Were they men or animals? With ill-favored faces, they would whisper to each other and pass on. As knavish fellows they deserve anything but love, but as subjects of an ill-governed empire they certainly deserve pity. At first they dreaded the Japanese; they stared at us from a distance, but did not come near us; probably because they had been robbed of their possessions by the Russians, and their wives and daughters had been insulted by them. The Japanese army, from the very first, was extremely careful to be just and kind to the natives and encouraged them to pursue their daily work in peace. Consequently they soon began to be friendly with us and to welcome us eagerly. However, they are a race of men who would risk even their lives to make money, and would live in a pig-pen with ten thousand pieces of gold in their pockets. How our army suffered from the treachery of these money-grubbers will be told later on.
“Ata, ata! Wo, wo!”
This strange cry we constantly heard at the front—it is the natives’ way of driving horses and cows. Their skill in managing cattle and horses is far beyond ours. We could not help being struck with the manner in which the animals obeyed their orders; they would go to right or left at the sound of these signals, and would move as one’s own limbs without the slightest use of whips. The relation between these natives and their cattle and horses is like that between well-disciplined soldiers and their commanders; not the fear of whip and scolding, but a voluntary respect and submission, is the secret of military discipline and success. The fact that the Russian soldiers were lacking in this important factor became clear later by the testimony of the captives.
After some companies of our division had landed with much ado, the storm grew worse and the landing was suspended. The colonel, an aide-de-camp, the interpreter, the chaplain, and myself, accompanied by a handful of guards, crossed the wilderness and wended our way toward Wangchia-tun, fixed as our stopping-place for that night. We busied ourselves with the map and the compass, while the interpreter asked question after question of the natives. I consulted a Chinese-Japanese conversation book, and asked them in broken words, “Russian soldiers, have they come?” to which they replied, “To Port Arthur they have fled.” We were of course disappointed not to encounter the long-looked-for antagonists at once!
Seven ri’s journey through a sand plain brought us to the willow-covered village Wangchia-tun in the rainy and windy evening, when strange birds were hastening to their roosts.