In the north-west hung a huge black bank of clouds, presaging a thunderstorm; and against this inky background the lightning played almost perpetually. As yet there was no thunder, but the thunder came later.
The approaching storm brought on night prematurely; but the sunlight which was quenched was replaced by the red flare from two villages near Liaoyang, which the Russians had set on fire.
Half-way between Liaoyang and Shushan, but a little to the west, is a grove of trees, under which General Kuropatkin, mounted on a white horse and surrounded by his staff and his body-guard of Amur Cossacks halted while the Russian reserves advanced against the Japanese who were threatening their right flank.
Meanwhile the roar of the artillery had redoubled in violence. Darkness was closing in, and the guns thundered with great wrath, because they knew that they had but a short time. And when they had reached a pitch of loudness that seemed impossible to be exceeded, some big angry battery would suddenly and unexpectedly give vent to a series of terrific shrieks that seemed calculated to split the mountain from base to summit.
At length the long-threatening thunderstorm burst, and, as if awed by the wrath of heaven, the earthly artillery gradually ceased, the last flashes of the shrapnel bursting in the darkness above Shushan as if to emphasise the importance of that position. A diminished rifle-fire afterwards continued at intervals, but finally there was silence.
As the village at the foot of Shushan in which I had slept the night before, was on fire, I determined to return to Liaoyang in the darkness, not thinking of what an extremely dangerous thing it was to do on such a night. The rain was coming down in torrents, and my horse had not floundered far through the sticky mud when I heard a voice cry: " Kto idyot? " (Who goes there?) I answered: " Svoi " (of yours), as I had been accustomed to do in Port Arthur; but, whether it was because this was not the password or because of my foreign accent, the sentry refused to let me proceed. " Nelzya! " (Impossible!) he said, and when I pressed him he kindly pointed out to me another road, a road which led to an intrenched position, where I stood a good chance of getting shot if I employed my " Svoi."
I thanked him, and went in the direction indicated, but I had not gone far before I was brought to a halt by another " Kto idyot? " more emphatic than the previous one. My password was an even greater failure this time, for it led to my immediate arrest. In fact if I had told the sentry I was a Japanese officer he could not have shown greater promptness in arresting me. He rushed forward, and, catching hold of the bridle of my horse, questioned me further.
II Who are you? " he asked fiercely.
" A war correspondent," I answered mildly, aware that among military men it is not a name to conjure with.
" A war correspondent? " he repeated, with the air of a man who has had a new word added to his vocabulary. " Are you Chinese? "
I told him my nationality, but he was still dissatisfied.
Having made me dismount, he passed his hand over my chin, and, finding that I had no hair on my face, he jumped back with an oath and was near bayonetting me on the spot. I must surely be a Japanese. On my imploring him to bring me to some of his superiors, he at last conducted me to a place where I was told that I would find a captain. With him went several rough voices, the owners of which I could not see.
I was glad that he consented to conduct me to the captain, as I had now fully realised my danger, and had seen that it would take very little to make these frightened, ignorant men shoot or stab me. "The captain/' I said to myself, 4< will understand the situation perfectly, and release me at once." In this I made a great mistake, for the captain turned out to be twenty times as scared as the soldiers. He was standing with a number of men in a post a few paces off the path on which I was walking with my guard; and when I heard his high-pitched, nervous voice call out in the darkness asking us what was the matter, I began to fear that it was all up with me, and my imagination became feverishly active. I felt a bayonet thrust savagely into the pit of my stomach, I felt the point come with a terrific jar against my backbone. I was smashed brutally over the head with a clubbed rifle. I heard my skull give way beneath the blow. I saw myself lying on the ground, in a dying condition, my bandaged hand twitching feebly. I saw in the newspapers a brief paragraph which said that I had been killed by a Japanese shell.
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
When the circumstances of my arrest were related to the captain he became frenzied with excitement.