The scene in Towtaidze at this moment is deeply engraved on my memory. The colonel is drawing a map in the ground with the end of his scabbard, and is talking, although the appalling visitations of shimose prevent me occasionally from catching what he says. Projectiles throw up dun clouds of earth. Shells burst among us with reverberating roar. It is an inferno. Two dead men are lying on the roadside and two living men are working hard to scoop out a grave for them in that frozen ground. There is a wild, frankly frightened look in the eyes of the soldiers who are hidden in the trenches. The sky is overcast. The officers are remarkably affable, but nobody cares to look any one else straight in the eye lest his secret be revealed, lest it be found that his own eye is rolling unsteadily in its socket, that his cheeks are flushed and that his manner is slightly unstable and exaggerated. Our horses are feeding peaceably, as if there was no such thing as war. On such occasions one can always get them plenty of fodder which has been left behind in the confusion. Things are lying about — typical Russian things. Here is a long folded grey overcoat shaped like a yoke for a horse's neck, both ends meeting and clinched together by means of a very black and sooty tin porringer. It was evidently intended to be worn athwart the shoulder. There are also many blood-stained, nondescript rags, sad reminders of the wounded. A patriarchal soldier hobbles past, all hunched up as if broken in two. He is only wounded in the hand. Another man comes, reverentially carrying the overcoat belonging to the wounded man. A third brings his rifle and cartridges. The colonel is easy on these men. He does not curse at them and send them scurrying back to the front, as an English or American officer would have done. He talks to them affably for several minutes and then lets them go on. Shrapnel bursts among the trees on the other side of the road, sending the sparrows flying with sharp chirpings of discontent to every point of the compass and making the tethered horses jump. Bullets kick up the dust on the road. Evening is coming on, and Rikacheff and I are anxious to know where we can find the 8th Corps. We are told that their headquarters is at Davanganpu. The leaden storm of shrapnel and shimose continues. I often discover myself muttering, " What terrible fellows these Japs are! What superhuman perseverance! What incredible bravery! How little did I think that the awkward, smooth-faced lads in uniform whom I used so often to meet walking hand-in hand in Uyeno Park like Dresden shepherdesses, would prove to be such demons for warfare! What can we, any of us — Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, Russians — what can any of us do against a race which fears no more the supreme dolour of death than we fear a shower of rain? And these, if you please, are a people ■ ayant une nature d oiseau ou de papillon, plutot que d'hommes ordinaires.' " Amidst the obstinate, incessant, exasperating uproar the words of that silly Frenchman ring in my ears like the mocking laughter of a fiend.
Meanwhile the distant boom of the valiant Tserpitsky's four-and-twenty batteries added to the nearer roar of Miloff s great guns and of the Japanese cannon, the unceasing crackle of infantry fire, the continuous rattle, rattle, rattle of the machine guns. At some point in front — I am afraid to raise my head to see where — some vital issue is in arbitrament, some point of ultimate importance is being discussed. Towards that point the troops are now rushing like water above a cataract. I quickly raise my head and glance in the direction in which they are going. What a scene! The fighting line is marked by a pall of shrapnel smoke and dust, hanging in mid air like the mists of Niagara. The Japanese are coming on like the whirlwind from out of the North which Ezekiel saw in his terrible vision.