In the intervals between the explosions we heard behind us a sound as of broken potsherds. It was caused by shell-cases and fragments of shell rolling down the rocky face of the mountain. The colonel, the captain and myself finally decided to make a combined rush for it. I broke away, however, with the intention of rescuing an ink-bottle and some writingpaper which I had left^in the bomb-proof; but, while I stood hesitating outside, uncertain whether to enter or not, a shell burst with a deafening roar in the very doorway.
Amid the resultant smoke and dust I saw several pairs of soldiers' legs, but did not stop long enough to see if they were connected with bodies or not. I must have flown down that mountain like a bird, for two minutes afterwards I found myself sitting on the plain at the base of it, about half a mile off. I was covered with clay, had lost my hat and one boot, and was getting my hand re-bandaged in a German-speaking Red Cross Hospital, which consisted of several large straw mats spread on the ground and covered with half-naked, moaning men.
The neighbourhood was littered with bandages, topboots that had been cut from wounded legs, and strips of dirty and blood-stained shirts and "rubashkas." The mats were splashed with blood, and on the ground alongside them lay two soldiers whose wounds were so bad that they were unconscious and had only a few moments to live. Their faces were covered by a piece of a muddy bag to which clung some oats, and I noticed that the breast of one of them rose and fell.
Others — dead men — presented a terribly squalid and repulsive appearance as they were thrown into carts. A line of Red Cross vehicles stretched without a break from Shushan to Liaoyang.
Some wounded officers were being held out like little children, as, with pitiful moans, they discharged the offices of nature. I suddenly found that I was sitting in a large black hole in the ground. It had been made by a shell, and other shells were falling all around. Some vindictive god seemed, like the executioners of St. Sebastian in the famous painting of Pollaiuoli, to be purposely planting his dread missiles in such a way as not to injure us mortally, so that we might experience the greatest possible measure of anguish before receiving the final, irrevocable blow.
Finally, Colonel Waters and Captain Reichman left me in order to follow Stackelberg, and, lest I forget it, I take this opportunity of thanking these two brave men, representing the two great sections of mine own people, for the kindness they showed me on this trying occasion.
It was now six o'clock in the evening, and the Japanese were about to deliver their grand attack. We had been caught in the preparatory artillery fire which was concentrated on Shushan, and which Colonel Waters, a calm, well-read observer, declares to have been the hottest artillery fire in the history of the
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
world, "as hot," he says, u as the musketry fire in skirmishing line."
When I viewed Shushan from the foot of the hill I failed to understand how we had managed to escape alive. The mountain stood out dark and lone against a blood-red patch of sky. The gathering darkness menaced it. Its triple summit was encircled by a crown of bursting shrapnel. Girt by thunders and lightnings, it recalled the Biblical description of Sinai. Some terrible god seemed to have descended on it in fire and smoke. The ruined tower was struck every ten or twenty minutes, and, each time, a cloud of dust and smoke shot upwards from it like the cheer of a great multitude.
I watched it, awe-stricken, as a man who escapes from a wrecked ship watches the waves rush foaming over the masthead. Surely, I said to myself, nothing, whether it be beast or man, can live in such a downpour. The sky was filled with a soft, translucent mist, which I had hitherto supposed to be characteristic of a Japanese evening alone, and a picket of Ural Cossacks, who had happened just then to ride along some rising ground to the west, were glorified for a moment into archangels as they passed through this delicate veil of vapour, and as the picturesque outlines of themselves and their horses and lances stood out clearly against the gorgeous west.
In that blood-red sky, apparently right over the heads of the Cossacks, but in reality some versts to the south-west, there were suddenly three beautiful flashes of white light, as if a magnesium ribbon had been burnt — no, there were four, five, six, seven — seven beautiful bursts of shrapnel light, which were
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instantly succeeded by small puffs of brownish yellow smoke that dissolved gracefully.