On the busy little commercial world of Port Arthur the shells of Togo had something like the effect of a Gabriel's trumpet. Business people, friends of mine, who had for a score of years or so been accustomed to sit behind desks with pens in their hands and ledgers before them, had it suddenly borne in on them that there are other things in life besides pens and ledgers and £ s. d., — that there is war, and death. One of them was found, hours after the Japanese had withdrawn, rushing northwards without hat or coat. A clerk of the Russo-Chinese Bank disappeared, absentmindedly, with a very large sum of money. The manager of a big firm seized all the spare cash in the till and departed with the observation that he would stand a good deal, but was " bio wed" if he would stand that.
On the whole, the genial and energetic merchants of Port Arthur did not cut a particularly heroic figure when they heard the voice of the guns. They scattered like a flock of sheep which have heard the roar of the lion.
PART II WITH THE ARMY
I did not remain long in Chefoo, which, after its first rude awakening on the night of February 9, had become one of the drunkenest places in the Far East, but went on to Newchwang and afterwards to Mukden. From Mukden I went to Liaoyang and from Liaoyang to General Count Keller, and afterwards to the famous Cossack leader, General Mishchenko, whose brigade I joined in preference to any other section of the army because I had always heard Russians talk with bated breath of what the Cossacks were going to do to the Japanese.
General Mishchenko, who looks like a typical old Hungarian hussar, with reddish, protuberant nose and grey hair and moustaches, kindly asked me to stay at his headquarters, eat at his table, and put up wherever he put up.
After a few days he insisted on calling me, after the kindly Russian fashion, Franz Yakovlovitch (" Francis son-of- James," James being my father's name), and, as his officers and men were all very amiable, my sojourn among those famous horsemen forms one of the pleasantest experiences in my life.
On the day after I joined Mishchenko, I went out on a reconnoitring expedition, and, as soon as I returned to camp, the battle of Ta-shih-chiao began. Through out the battle I remained with the general on the artillery position; for, instead of being allowed to worry the enemy with his Cossacks, Mishchenko had been ordered to remain at a point on the extreme left flank and try to do all the damage he could with his artillery, and these tactics he pursued until the close of the year. In fact Mishchenko is not a cavalry man at all; he is an artillery officer. I may here remark that the Cossack is very fond of cannon, and makes a skilful artilleryman.
After the battle we retreated in good order, fought an action of the same kind at Haicheng, and again retreated.
Then came the battle of Liaoyang, which I watched from the top of Shushan hill. Everybody knows that Shushan is a triple-peaked hill, 426 feet high, a few miles to the south of Liaoyang, and that during the battle it was occupied by General Baron Stackelberg, with whom, instead of with Mishchenko, I had decided, by way of a change, to see this fight. On August 30, I ascended Shushan, and found the top cut up by trenches and traversed by wire entanglements, while at its base were trous de loupy fougasses and every other species of field defence one can think of. In the neighbourhood there were over a hundred guns in position.