The heat was now terrible. More than once a whole battalion rushed into a river to drink, under the full sweep of the enemy's fire. Still the resistless army of small brown men swept onward, marching through fields of Chinese corn, winding along narrow defiles, holding firmly every point of vantage gained.
As the end of August drew near it was evident that the two mighty armies must meet. Minor battles had been fought, and skirmishes had been of almost daily occurrence throughout the campaign, but the vast hordes of armed men from the East and West had not yet been pitted against each other. The time had come at last, and the civilised world held its breath.
The Russian army lay strongly entrenched at Liaoyang, an old town on the line of the railroad between Port Arthur and Harbin. The Japanese had been pouring troops into the peninsula for months, a portion called the Third Army gathering around Port Arthur, under General Nogi, the remainder pressing northward on the heels of the retreating enemy. The objective of the First, Second, and Fourth Armies was Liaoyang. The supreme command of the Japanese forces was now entrusted to Field Marshal Marquis Oyama, who had commanded ten years before, in the war against China.
The three armies, having overcome every obstacle, were in touch before Liaoyang. They formed a huge horse-shoe, with its ends resting on the Taitse River, on the south bank of which stood Liaoyang. The Russians formed an inner horse-shoe in a similar position. On each side were over two hundred thousand men, nearly half a million human beings, all animated with the one desire to kill!
On the morning of August 30th, at the first grey of dawn a puff of white broke upward from the Japanese lines and a shell, filled with shrapnel, flew screaming across the peaceful plain—a dread messenger to announce the beginning of the longest and greatest battle the world had ever known.
One battery after another opened fire, throughout the entire front of nearly forty miles. Under cover of the artillery attack the Russians charged furiously, often driving the Japanese before them at the point of the bayonet; but no sooner was a company or a regiment annihilated than another took its place, and was hurled against the foe. Positions were taken and retaken. The carnage was terrible. Never in the world's history had such enormous masses of men thrown their lives away with utter abandon. On each side a thousand cannon thundered from morning till night. At noon of the second day a slow rain began to fall, transforming the plain into a quagmire, crossed and recrossed by endless trains of men, a part charging toward the front with wild shouts of defiance, a part halting, crawling, limping, or lying in carts, seeking the hospitals, where their ghastly wounds could be treated. When the second night fell it was reported in every capital in both hemispheres that after two days of desperate fighting Kouropatkin had gained a decided advantage.
Fred Larkin was in his element. Dashing to and fro on a shaggy little Siberian pony, he gathered news as if by instinct. His experience in the Spanish-American War served him in good stead, and he not only knew what deductions to draw from certain movements on both sides, but what information was most desired by his paper and the great reading public at home. In Boston the crowds in lower Washington Street read on the bulletin boards the despatches he dashed off in his note-book and sent from the Liaoyang telegraph office after they had been duly censored.
Late in the afternoon on the second day of the battle he was making his way back to the town across the miry fields south of Liaoyang. The shaggy pony shook his mane and snorted as the rain fell, but was too tired to trot.
"Tough day, pony," said Fred, who himself was so used up with his exertions that he could hardly sit upright in the saddle. "Never mind, old boy. In half an hour you will be in your stable, munching oats. You shall have an extra good supper for the hard work you've—hallo! be careful!"
The pony had wandered a little from the main road, which the steady stream of hospital and commissary waggons had made well-nigh impassable, and Fred had allowed him to pick out his own path across the plain so long as his general direction was right. The little animal now interrupted him by shying violently at an object upon which he had almost trampled. Peering down Fred saw a soldier stretched out upon the sodden ground. At first he thought the man was dead, but looking more closely he saw the soldier's hand move slightly, as if to ward off a blow.