On a level plain east of a frozen brook on whose western side lay Yangshihtun, we found two batteries pounding away at the Japanese, and as Rikacheff said that he knew an officer in one of them, we approached to make inquiries. The artillery officers were reposing on their backs in shallow pits, each man with a telephone at his ear, and some tattered novels and empty sardine tins lying on the straw beside him. They told Rikacheff that his friend was at that moment in the Kumernya or village temple on the other side of the brook. We accordingly visited this temple, which was being used as an observation station, and which was consequently the focus of a hot Japanese rifle and artillery fire. Once I got inside this temple enclosure, I discovered with a shock that I had never before known what a hot fire meant.
Every Chinese temple has got an elaborate gateway, with a covering like a roof. This particular temple had got a fine, large specimen of such a gateway when I came in; but there was not much of it left when I departed, somewhat precipitately, a few moments later. There was also an additional rent in the temple roof, while the ground outside was as full of holes as a pepper-pot. The courtyard of the temple would have been in the same condition had it not been for the fact that it was paved. Consequently shells did not go deep into it, but, whenever one struck it, showers of stone and iron flew about in all directions. A few moments before my arrival, part of the gable had been blown off the sanctuary, and in the new, white light from heaven that now streamed straight down on their faces — for the first time probably since the temple roof had been put on — the distorted idols inside glared diabolically against the sombre background. The light fell as in a painting by Correggio, but never did that joyful Italian make light fall on faces like those. My Celtic superstitiousness made my blood run cold at the prospect of meeting my last end in such an unholy spot, and my horror was increased by the presence of an insane Chinese bonze, whose sorceries and incantations, directed apparently against the unseen powers of the air that were smashing his temple to pieces, were demoniacal and uncanny.
The officer in charge of this post lived in a bombproof, from which he frequently emerged to take a hasty look through one of those telescopes, which, by means of a series of mirrors inside, enable a person to look over a wall without raising his head above the level of it — a hydroscope, I think, they call it. It was good that he was provided with such an instrument, for the sheet of bullets that flew over that massive temple wall could only be compared to a slanting hailstorm. I was able to get just one glimpse of the Japanese, or, rather, of one or two jet-black Japanese heads bobbing up and down behind a group of Chinese tombs a few hundred yards off; and of a single active little figure in a khaki-coloured overcoat that shot from one mound of earth to another. At this point the Japanese were overpoweringly superior in numbers, all that stood between them and us being a bleak grey line of Russian infantrymen lying, closepacked, behind the squat mud wall which surrounded the village.
Rikacheff duly discovered his friend, and, standing on a piece of ground littered with empty shell-cases, unexploded projectiles, and bits of twisted and tortured metal, they tried to talk. But, what with the rapid bang! bang! bang! of the shimose, the crash of falling masonry, and the ominous whistle of highvelocity projectiles passing overhead, it was almost as difficult to carry on a conversation as it would have been on board a ship during a typhoon.
This was the very front. It was one of the hottest points of the battle, and in order to get a good view of it I went into the village. What a desolation! There came into my mind biblical descriptions of cities wasted and empty and smitten by the hand of God. Soldiers whose faces were blanched with terror hid behind tottering walls. The grey-coated line in front fired steadily, steadily, as if they were automatic machines fixed to the ground. Meanwhile the Japanese outflanking army was sweeping round towards Pehling, the tombs of the Manchu Emperors.
CHAPTER XIII
On March 7 the Japanese outflanking army made a sudden sweep eastwards, which brought them close to the Imperial tombs and to the railroad. On the morning of March 8 I rode out to the north-west with my friend Rikacheff to see what was happening in that direction. We first came to Houta (or Howha, as the Russians call it), a village a little north of the Tsinmintun Road, and distinguished by a pagoda of much the same appearance as the famous pagoda at Liaoyang. Here we found the staff of the Second Army.