On the level ground, almost a thousand yards to the south-west of it, ran a trench filled with Russian soldiers, and towards this trench I saw the khaki- coated Japanese advance, evidently with the intention of turning the hill. When I say that I saw the Japanese I mean that I saw here and there a khaki-clad figure showing clearly for a second or so against the green fields. These infrequent glimpses were enough for the scores of trained eyes that were watching from the top of Shushan. Bang! bang! bang! went half a dozen batteries at once, and a row of fleecy shrapnel cloudlets hung low over the kiaoliang fields. One shell caught about a score of men as they crossed a road that ran between the trench and the railway, and killed all of them. The picture of that heap of corpses, that muddy road, that trench with its bristling rifles, and that railway line, is so branded into my mind, owing to the number of times that I looked at it through my telescope, that there are few spots on this earth which I know so well. Another object which I seem to have known from earliest infancy is a small wooden house built alongside the railway track and evidently intended for railway men. Outside this house, which was only about fifty yards distant from the nearest Japanese, were a few Russian soldiers, whose position was precarious, for they could not get away without being exposed for several hundred yards to the fire of the enemy. It was almost comical, however, to see how they kept peering round the corner to see if the enemy were advancing.
Meanwhile the latter crept forward slowly, oh! so slowly! until they were within almost a hundred yards of the trench. I thought that they would then make a wild, dramatic rush forwards, but, instead of that, they lay almost twenty-four hours so well hidden that they must have burrowed their way into the ground, for the Russians had beaten down all the kiaoliang for hundreds of yards in front of the trench.
A gigantic pounding and booming went on all this time, but I had no key to it. It was like listening to people squabbling in an unknown tongue. Feeling that war was a delusion, I went to sleep that night in a Chinese hovel at the foot of Shushan; but half an hour or so after dozing off I suddenly awoke with the roar of imaginary cannon in my ears, and was more startled by the great silence than if a whole battery had been thundering beside me.
About the middle of the night I was awakened by the rattle of real musketry, evidently very near. Some of the Russian officers who were sleeping in the same hut with me got up, lighted candles, and moved about uneasily, in the attitudes of men listening for the approach of a visitor; but none of them went outside, and finally the firing died out, and we all went to sleep again.
At daybreak on Wednesday morning, August 31, I was awakened by a cannonade, so loud and so continuous that I rushed out of the house in a panic. The scene was enthralling, It was a beautiful dawn. The sky was perfectly clear of clouds. The moon shone brightly, and alongside it burned one brilliant star. There was just enough darkness in the air to set off to the best advantage the bright, continuous flashes of shrapnel, and enough of the rosy light of dawn to make the smoke of the bursting projectiles look like the soft fleecy cloudlets from which angel heads emerge in a famous painting of Murillo. Over the whole scene was spread the estilo vaporoso of that great master. It was a morn on which the Holy Child might have appeared to St. Antony.
I climbed Shushan, and gazed from that elevated point on a scene of rare beauty. The great plain of the Liao-ho was covered with a layer of mist which,
touched by the rays of the sun, had the appearance of a silver sea, out of which rose on the north the famous old pagoda of Liaoyang and the glittering walls and gates of what almost seemed to be the Holy City. In an hour or so this great white carpet had been rolled up for the day, and the rich plain was flooded with sunshine, but as yet no living thing was visible. The spectators were present, but the stage was empty.
On the central peak of Shushan General Baron Stackelberg had installed himself in a ruined Korean tower, from which ran a number of telephone wires. I was on the eastern peak with Colonel Waters, the British military attache, and Captain Reichman, the American attache. An alleged bomb-proof had been constructed close by for the use of the attaches, but we all preferred to shelter ourselves behind a huge mass of rock which projected on the southern side of the peak, and over the shoulder of which we had a very good view of all that was going on below.