Bullets had whistled overhead all day on Tuesday, and many shells had exploded against the southern face of this rock. We therefore thought that the place was not quite safe, which was true, for on Tuesday alone 3000 men had been killed in that part of the field by shrapnel. On Wednesday we had still more reason to think so. Early that morning Colonel Waters had cheered us with the intelligence that the Japanese would infallibly work round on the west, and shell us from that direction; and, sure enough, at 1 1 a.m. Captain Reichman saw the flash of a Japanese gun due west of us. It seemed at first, however, as if shrapnel, the invention of the white man, shrank from rending its parent. It was marvellous and incredible how it t missed. It seemed to choose every open space it could find, but at last its yellow master forced it to obey.
Shortly after eleven o'clock, shells began to burst in rapid succession on the north side of the rock. Soon it had become a regular downpour of exploding steel, and all the people that were on the mountain trembled. Black masses of smoke seemed to spurt out of the earth like geysers. Snowy puffs of shrapnel surrounded the summit. Balls whistled past like an equinoctial wind. Batteries big and little thundered and shrieked. We realised with horror and dismay that Shushan had suddenly become the pivot of the battle, the centre of the whole gigantic contest. It was a bombardment of hell. The roar waxed louder and louder, and the whole mount quaked greatly. It seemed as if the Japanese meant to pulverise it. I could not hear myself speak, but I fancied I could hear the pounding of my heart. I developed an intense desire to get away, but I could no more let go that rock than a drowning man can let go a straw that he has grasped. I had squeezed my person into the smallest possible compass at its base, and every time a shell burst close to me I backed up against that hundred-ton cliff with such violence that I feared I should knock it down. For days afterwards I was unable to account for those bruises on my back. I knew that it was dangerous to be near that rock, as the Japanese were probably using it as a mark to shoot by, but I saw that the path leading down the hill was more dangerous still, for shells were bursting on it every few minutes. The old Korean tower which sheltered General Stackelberg was hit again and again, and the telephone wires were cut in a dozen places. Colonel Waters got a bullet hole in his cloak. Before long we saw General Stackelberg totter feebly down the hill, upheld on either side by two officers and followed by a retinue of bursting projectiles. He had sustained a concussion, his face was as white as paper, and he was barely able to walk.
The departure of the general made a most gloomy impression on me. I felt as some of the inhabitants of Sodom must after all have felt in their secret hearts when they saw the wise man Lot go forth from their city.
A curse appeared to hang over that mountain. Everybody seemed to have now deserted it. I felt it tremble beneath me. " God knows what's going to happen now," said I, for the twentieth time in forty minutes. " Hadn't we better clear out of this? " I was fully convinced — although I did not like to say so in presence of the military men — that the enemy had undermined Shusan and that it would go sky-high in a few moments. I fancied I heard the subterranean sound of picks.
"These Japs will storm the hill," whispered Captain Reichman hoarsely, adding, with extreme emphasis, " No d d thing can stop them! "
I glanced quickly over my shoulder, for there rose before me a swift vision of a wave of roaring fanatics with blood-stained bayonets cresting the rock above us.
Previous to this I had been wounded in the hand, and at last I decided to leave this doomed peak, which the Japanese seemed bent on smashing to atoms. A Russian column had now come round on the right. We could hear their brass band playing and their wild " Ura! ura! ura! " but it was impossible to look at
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them over the shoulder of the rock, as shells were bursting there every minute. I would have given a year of my life for one glance at the spectacle below — the most terrible of all war's terrible sights — the spectacle of a great bayonet charge; but the price demanded was too high. It was my life itself.