We watched this terrible advance as Arabs in the desert might watch in the heavens the approach of the dreaded simoom. We could not see the enemy, but we could mark his progress by an awe-inspiring precursor, by a reverberating vanguard of shrapnel and shimose which scourged the earth for half a dozen miles ahead of him.
To-day we are conscious of defeat. We live in the shadow of a final cataclysmal disaster, the news of which has not yet been broken to us. What are these ominous whispers about Tsinmintun, Teihling, the road to Mukden. Oh, tell us, Vashe Blagarodie, one of noble birth! is the battle lost? Is our retreat cut off?
We feel like an unarmed man groping in a dark room, where he knows that a strong enemy awaits him, in silence, hidden, with uplifted sabre.
Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die. O source of hope! Orthodox Tsar! O Little Father! O Gosudar! You were once our God, but now God and you have alike failed us. Holy Russia, we shall never see you again! God we shall never see, for there is no God! Our popes have lied to us about Him. If God existed He would never allow His chosen people to be butchered like swine by the savage Hunghuze and the pagan Yapontszi.
I left Suhudyapu before the Japanese appeared on the scene and brought to a conclusion this Belshazzar revel. I afterwards asked the practical-minded conquerors what they had seen, but they did not remember anything beyond the exact number of the bags of corn which had been captured on this occasion.
CHAPTER XI
On the evening of March 3 I left Suhudyapu with a Finnish officer in order to join General Kaulbars west of Mukden. The road to Madyapu was crowded with retreating troops. At Madyapu itself some excitement was caused by a Japanese patrol firing on the Russians. The audacity of the Japanese in coming so far inside the enemy's lines was one of the most remarkable things in this battle, while the entire absence of Cossack patrols at that point was a piece of inexcusable neglect on the part of the Russians, In fact, the Cossacks were more useless during the battle of Mukden than they had ever been before in this war, and that is putting the case against them very strong indeed. It is true that the Japanese are bad riders and have bad horses, but their superior audacity and pluck more than counterbalance these defects.
Crossing the Hun we rode northward for some distance, thinking that we should find Kaulbars in that direction, but several circumstances induced us to retrace our steps. The first was that all the villages in front of us and to right and left of us were ablaze. I counted about a dozen different conflagrations on the horizon, and unless we expected to find Kaulbars' staff in the middle of a burning village it seemed that the only safe thing for us to do was to go west to Mukden. Then, again, we noticed a number of suspicious-looking horsemen riding about in the distance, and though it might be that they were Russians, there was a considerable probability they were the very Japanese who had been firing on us half an hour before.
We returned therefore to Madyapu just in time to witness an unpleasant incident. There was a big uproar in a Chinese farmers house, and riding up to the kiaolang fence which surrounded it we looked over. Inside, a Russian officer, whose eyes were concealed by large black goggles and the rest of whose face was as effectively hidden under a thick coating of grey dust, was ordering, with violent gestures, the arrest of all the Chinese in the house. A handsome young Chinese woman, with a baby in her arms, threw herself at his feet, but he repulsed her violently. An old, palsied woman was dragged out of the house by a pair of soldiers. A young Chinaman, evidently the husband of the young woman, lay on the ground outside, almost unconscious and evidently unable to move, despite the blows and kicks that were rained on him. An old man was dragged out, then an elderly woman. The sight was enough to have melted the heart of a stone, but in the faces of all these thousands of soldiers there was not the faintest gleam of pity. I do not know the rights and wrongs of the case, but the general cry of " signalizieravat!" seemed to indicate that these people had some connection with the arrival of Japanese scouts in the near vicinity. These poor people may have been spies, but this cry and the blows by which it was accompanied reminded me more than anything else of another cry: " He is a blasphemer! Crucify him! Crucify him! "
Such things may be necessary for the prosecution of war, and they may be done on the Japanese side as well as on the Russian, but, if so, I hold that victory gained at such a price is too dearly gained.
North of Madyapu we made another attempt to reach Kaulbars on the west, and, in fact, if we had gone north we should undoubtedly have reached him, for, as we afterwards learned, the Japanese had not yet come so far. But again we were intimidated and checked by the number of the burning villages. In some cases the horizon was lighted up for miles by an unbroken line of red, leaping, wavering flames, from which rose enormous columns of smoke. We rode up to the nearest of these conflagrations and found it to be the bakery of the Eighth Corps. Here we remained for a moment discussing our plans. The Finnish officer met a compatriot, also an officer, and it was strange to hear them talking in their own proscribed tongue, while Russian soldiers, tired to death, lay all around on the bare ground, fast asleep. I asked for an explanation of the arrests at Madyapu, and was told that the Chinese had set their house on fire in order to give notice to the Japanese that it was a good time to attack.