To the south was a grove of pine-trees surrounding a little shrine and surrounded by a wall, and this grove some of our men went to beat, not for game, however, but for hunters — we were the game. And the hunters were there, as a volley from the grove and the whizz of bullets overhead clearly indicated. A lieutenant near me clapped his hand suddenly to his side and said " Chort vozmee! " (" The devil take me! ") He had been wounded, and in ten seconds he was dead. Our Colonel shouted out directions; but, without listening to them, the men unanimously headed northward at a pace which very soon broke into a run. At the same time many of them shouted loudly that it was all a mistake, that the men concealed in the grove were Russians, and there were no Japanese there at all.
These optimists continued to run, however, as fast as the rest of us, and, as they ran, they raised a wild cry of " Stoi! Stoi! " (" Stop! Stop! ") evidently with the intention of getting those, whom they supposed to be their own men, to cease firing.
On reaching some rising ground to the north, we caught sight, in a plain far away to the west, of some squadrons of unmistakably Japanese cavalry; but though they were as different, of course, from the Cossacks as chalk is from cheese, some of our men joyfully cried out, " Slava Bogu! Nashe! Nashe! " (" Glory be to God! Ours! Ours! "), and clapped their hands with delight.
They were not long clapping their hands, for a volley from some concealed infantry to the northward soon drove us back like a flock of sheep, and showers of bullets from the east and the west completed our demoralisation. One man who fell wounded, cried: " Wait for me, my brothers, dear" (" Bratsui moi milenkiye "), but we left him lying there.
The cry of "StOl! Stoi! " was now taken up by almost everybody — including, I think, myself — and the effect was inexpressibly weird. It was varied by a wild, uncanny, lugubrious, inarticulate wail, which rose and fell at intervals like a funeral cry. When a child in Ireland I heard one night the unearthly cry of a banshee; and on this Manchurian hillside, mingled with the despairing shrieks of those unhappy soldiers, rushing wildly backwards and forwards, lashed by bullets, maddened by fear, I heard again the blood curdling warning of that messenger of death.
On getting into the broad, flat valley that I have already alluded to, the men all lay down instinctively along two shallow furrows, about a hundred yards apart, and, as I stepped over one of these lines in order to get inside, a man discharged his rifle close to my leg. It may have been an accident, but if I had been hit at such close range the wound would have been a bad one.
The Russians now began firing, although they could see nothing, while the Japanese increased their fire because they could see us perfectly. Our furrow was no protection whatever, even if the Japanese had not occupied higher ground. All our men had not yet taken their places on the ground with their companions, and many of them were still wandering aimlessly at large in the space between the two furrows, when suddenly there was a loud report, and a shrapnel shell exploded a little way off. At the same instant about a hundred men simultaneously bit the dust, falling down as suddenly as if each of them had been shot through the heart. A few moments later a good many of the corpses got up again and raced swiftly, with head bent, towards one or other of the absolutely unsheltered furrows. Of those that remained lying on the ground, it was easy to distinguish between the quick and the dead, for the latter lay in a position of absolute abandon^ while the former crouched and looked watchful.
The bullets had frightened us, but the shrapnel drove the fear of God into our souls, and after several shells had exploded right in our midst, there were to be seen between the two furrows many men standing up waving their hats in sign of submission. Some mounted their busbies on the points of their bayonets and agitated them furiously; but evidently the Japanese wanted more unequivocal tokens of surrender than this, for, after a moment's pause, they commenced shelling us harder than ever. The Russians now became panic-stricken. Those who had been lying down threw away their arms and sat up in such a way that the Japanese could not fail to hit them. Some, who must have lost their senses, stood up, gazing stupidly and listlessly at the bursting shrapnel, while the bullets whizzed around them and struck the ground at their feet.