It is a mistake to suppose that a battle is a display of terrible energy all the time. Sometimes officers and even generals take tea and smoke, and on such occasions the irresponsible correspondent comes perilously near to loafing. Two Zabaikal batteries and two sotnia of the Verkhnyudinsky Cossacks were this day attached to our force; and, in spite of his wounded leg, General Mishchenko came all the way from Mukden in his carriage in order to give his old chief, Tserpitsky, the benefit of his advice. They had been together during the Boxer troubles in China, but, alas! to use an expressive American colloquialism, they were now, " up against a different proposition."
How strange, pathetic almost, it was to read at this time in old newspapers of the great exploits of Russian generals against the Chinese in 1900, generals who were now unable to do anything against the Japanese! SakharofTs march along the Sungari, Linievitch's capture of Newchwang and Mukden, Rennenkampfs storming of Ai'goun, Orloff's celebrated passage of the Khingan mountains, how great these feats would have looked if there had been no Russo-Japanese War! How small they now seemed! It was good for Pizarro and Cortes that they had never been called upon to fight some stubborn people like the English or the Dutch. Perhaps, too, it was good for us English that we never stirred up in India such a nest of hornets as the Japanese.
At five o'clock in the evening, four mortar batteries — thirty-two guns, — moved slowly round on our left towards Madyapu in a long and most imposing line, which greatly cheered our soldiers; but what we on the spot considered as the most important event of the day, although history may take a different view, was the fact that one of the fine kitchen waggons which the Russians made use of in their army, paid us a flying visit, which greatly improved our temper. Immediately after, however, a couple of ugly incidents rudely disturbed this happy state of mind. A party of one hundred and fifty Russians, who told a rather incredible story about having lost their regiment, were found wandering about near the Japanese lines in the direction of Madyapu, evidently with the intention of surrendering. Tserpitsky gave them a terrible scolding, and immediately marched them into the very hottest corner in the whole field, a place where they
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might easily get killed, but could not possibly surrender without being cut to pieces by their own men.
Then a Russian deserter was brought in with his hands tied behind his back, charged with having been among the Japanese, and having even fired on his own men. It was an extraordinary tale; but the dusty, bitter soldiers who led him in asserted that he did not belong to any regiment in that part of the field, and that they had seen him leave the Japanese lines and come crawling in among them, evidently in order to ascertain their strength and then to bring the information back to the enemy. The inference was that he had surrendered to the Japanese, perhaps months before, and that they had ever since employed him to go about in his Russian uniform and get them information which neither they themselves nor their Chinese spies could obtain. This unfortunate renegade met with little sympathy from his captors. On his observing with white lips that he had a wife and children at home, one of the soldiers told him not to worry about them, as " the Japanese will send them the money all right."
The chief of staff abused him fiercely, winding up by asking him if he belonged to the Orthodox Church and if he wore a cross. It would have been a great discovery if he had turned out to be a Jew; but, on the breast of his shirt being torn open, it was discovered that he did wear a cross — a Greek cross, too, not a Latin one.