The sun sent streamers into the white smoke drapery upon the Russian bank. The Island Empire men were thrashing against it. They met with their breasts the fire that spurted continuously from the ledges. One man of a Japanese company lived to gain the top of the trench. He was skewered on Russian bayonets and shaken down among his writhing fellow-soldiers, as the wing of a chicken is served upon a waiting plate. Running, crawling, Routledge made his way down and forward.
The Japanese hope lives high above the loss of companies. It was a glad morning for the Island Empire men, a bright task they were given to do. Other companies, full quota, were shot forward to tread upon the dead and beat themselves to death against the entrenchment. A third torrent was rolled against the Russians before the second had suffered a complete blood-letting.... Routledge saw one five-foot demon wielding his rifle-butt upon the rim of the trench, in the midst of gray Russian giants. For an instant he was a human tornado, filled with the idea to kill—that Brownie—then he was sucked down and stilled. Routledge wondered if they completely wiped out the little man’s smile at the last.
He was ill from the butchery, and his mind was prone to grope away from the bleeding heart of things; still, he missed little of the great tragedy which unfolded in the smoke. And always Oku, unparalleled profligate of men, coiled up his companies and sprung them against a position which Napoleon would have called impregnable—Oku, whose voice was quiet as a mystic’s prayer. The thought came to Routledge that the women of America would tear down the capitol at Washington with their hands, if the walls contained a monster who had spent the blood of their sons and lovers as Oku was doing now.
A new tumult in the air! It was like an instant horrid crash of drums in the midst of a violin solo. Artillery now roared down upon Oyama’s left wing.... The wildest dream of hell was on. Routledge, crawling westward through the pit of fire, saw a platoon of infantry smashed as a cue-ball shatters a fifteen block in pool.... Westward under the Russian guns, he crawled through the sun-shot, smoke-charged shambles, miraculously continuing alive in that thick, steady, annihilating blizzard of steel—his brain desperate with the rush of images and the shock of sounds. Over a blood-wet turf he crawled, among the quivering parts of men....
Silence. Oku stopped to breathe and pick up the fragments.... From far up on the Russian works—it was like the celestial singing in the ears of the dying—began a distant, thrilling music. Some regiment or brigade, swinging into the intrenchments to relieve a weary command, had burst into song.... Once before Routledge had caught a touch of this enchantment, during the Boxer Rebellion. He had never been able to forget Jerry Cardinegh’s telling of the Russian battle-hymns at Plevna.... Great emotions bowed him now. Another terrace of defense caught up the song, and the winds that cleared the reeking valley of smoke carried along the vibrant inspiration. Every Russian heart gripped the grand contagion. From terrace to terrace, from trench to trench, from pit to emplacement, that glorious thunder stalked, a company, a battery, a brigade, at a stride. Each voice was a raw, dust-bitten shout—the whole a majestic harmony, from the cannon-meat of Liaoyang! Sons of the North, gray, sodden, sorrow-stunted men of pent misery and unlit souls—Finlander, Siberian, Caspian, Caucasian—hurling forth their heart-hunger in a tumult of song that shook the continent. The spirit of All the Russias giving tongue—the tragedy of Poland, the clank of chains, the mockery of palaces, the iron pressure of frost, the wail of the wolf-pack on frozen tundras, the cry of the crushed, the blind groping of the human to God—it was all in that rhythmic roar, all the dreadful annals of a decadent people.
As it was born, so it died,—that music,—from terrace to terrace, the last wavering chant from out the city walls. The little Japanese made no answer. Routledge could not help but see the mark of the beast in contrast. It wasn’t the Russians that bothered Oku, but the Russian position. Kuroki would pull them out of that.... Song or steel, they would take Liaoyang. They prepared to charge again.
In the disorder of the next charge Routledge crossed the railroad and passed out of the Japanese lines. Late afternoon, as he hurried westward for his horses, he met the eyes of Bingley. He was not given a chance to pass another way. The race for the cable was on.
TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER
ROUTLEDGE ENCOUNTERS THE “HORSE-KILLER” ON THE FIELD OF LIAOYANG, AND THEY RACE FOR THE UNCENSORED CABLE AT SHANHAIKWAN
To each man the intention of the other was clear as the purpose of a fire-department’s run. One of them would file the first uncensored story of the great battle. Bingley had given up his chance to follow the Japanese army, and had set his stony face to freedom for this end—and England could not have horsed a man more unwhippable. Routledge, striding into the sunset, toward the place he had left his mounts, discovered with a smile that his pace was quickening, quickening. The character of the man just passed was an inspiration to rivalry. Moreover, from a newspaper standpoint, the issue at hand was big among dreams. The Great God, News, is a marvellous master. Would England or America be first to connect with Manchuria by wire? World-News or Thames? If New York beat London, Dartmore would trace the story.... Dartmore had been a savage. Bingley had been a savage.