Somebody shouted to the bugler to blow the " Cease fire," and, lying on the ground, he blew for all he was worth. No officer ordered the blowing of the " Cease fire" or the hoisting of the white flag. The men did these things of their own accord, while the officers stood by, listlessly expecting death. We could see that at the other furrow conditions were much the same as with us. The soldiers had all thrown away their arms and were exposing themselves carelessly. Between the two lines many soldiers, who still thoughtlessly retained their rifles, were walking about at random over the ridges from which the stumps of last year's " kiaoliang" crop still projected. One of them waved a large white flag, but still the Japanese made no sign, and their fire continued unabated.
There now arose a fierce cry of " Throw away your arms! " and some soldiers, not content with having got rid of their rifles, began to throw away their cartridges and their belts.
Even at this stage there were still men foolish enough or crazed enough to shout: "That's not the Japanese at all. That's our artillery. It's all a mistake! Stoi! Stoi!'"
And again the wild wail of "Stoi! Stoi!" would rise and fall like the waves of the sea, the melancholy bugles blowing all the while a useless " Cease fire! "
I am convinced that the men who led this cry of •' Stoi! Stoi! " were insane. They ran around like wildeyed prophets who see a whole world rushing to perdition; and I feared that they would undo us all.
In battle the Siberian soldier is apt to become unhinged. At Tah-shih-chiao I had seen nearly a dozen insane foot-soldiers brought to Mishchenko's battery,
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and one of them, in a sudden access of fury, nearly routed the whole staff at a time when we were hard pressed by the Japanese. In his book on the war, M. Recouly tells a horrible story of a staff officer who went mad at the battle of the Shaho; and a German correspondent who was captured with another detachment during this retreat from Mukden, and who was my fellow prisoner in Japan, where he showed symptoms of great nervous excitement, afterwards shot himself.
Close by was lying a thin, cold-faced man with his face wrapped up in his overcoat. He was nursing a minor wound, and kept ejaculating to himself at intervals the word " Smert! Smert! " (Death). Suddenly he rolled over like a person turning uneasily in his sleep, but nobody suspected that anything had happened to him until the Japanese came up, when we found that he was dead. A burly man, standing in the open field about fifty yards off, collapsed without a word, like a heap of old clothes. The colonel fell from his horse, shot through the brain, whereupon the frightened animal bolted.
A short time before, some of his officers had warned him to get off his horse; but he had answered, almost in the words of the heroic Grand Duke Svatoslav Sgorevich, that there was no disgrace in dying,
Not perceiving at first that he had been shot through the head, we tore open the breast of his coat. Around his neck and inside his shirt were six or seven most beautiful religious medals and miniature " ikoni " of silver and gold suspended by fine chains of pure gold.
The officers were not in the least intimidated by the colonels fate, for they continued to expose themselves recklessly, and were killed or wounded one after another. Good sharpshooters were evidently picking them off.
These happenings froze every one of us with fear, and there were continual cries of " Gospodee Bozhe! " ("O Lord God!")
A private soldier, evidently the spokesman of several others, now approached me on his hands and knees. His face was streaming with tears which made clean channels down his dusty cheeks, and he implored me to go out to the Japanese and beg them to cease firing.
11 You are English, Batyushka (little father)," said he, " and the Japanese will do whatever you ask them."
I refused, and told him to ask one of his officers, but he said, "We have no officers. These officers don't belong to our regiment at all; " and continued to entreat me until I told him that the fire would cease directly.