Page:The Pacific Monthly vol. 14.djvu/94



Battery after battery threw shrapnel and common shell, howitzers shrieked and their missiles whirled with a heart-rending- twang, mortars hurled common shell and Shimose exjDlosive to the parapetted trenches on the hill crests; the sky was thick with flashes and little smoke clouds which dissolved quickly after the shells broke in air to hurl their splinters onto the soldiers and their works. The whip-like smack sounded loudly at hand, and dully along the distant line; little geysers of earth were lifted, and the whole welkin was discordant with the tumult of war.

At times a broken line of brown, with sun flashes showing on the steel, ran from the tall grain and a- rattling inferno echoed as the rifles and machine guns on the parapets swept down a cloud of missiles that out swaths in that rushing line of men. There were cheers and shrieks and groans as the cruel barbs of the wire tore the flesh — hear.t-glirring cries as unfortunates tumbled into the pits to be impaled on the stakes therein.

For two days these things had been recurring; seven times a whole line assault had been repelled, and the defenders were still in the strongholds- on the hills. The balloon of the enemy still ascended and descended, giving' ranges to unseen batteries that fired indirectly from the back of the hills; Ihe long lines of ponies carried ammunition cases from the south, blockades of thousands of lumbering Chinese carts with the stores of an army waited at the edge of the plain; orderlies galloped about; busy wiremen strung lines of shiny copper on little bamboo poles; bearers hurried up to relieve overworked men. How busy they were, these bearers; how busy were the surgeons with knife and scalpel in the usurped Chinese houses from whose tiled gateways red-cross flags drooped down.

Two days ago I had tied a Chinese pony to an altar in the courtyard of a lama temple, and had eaten fish and rice in a long-suffering battery, diving to the shelter pits as the gunners did; had trudged, foot-sore, with relief ammunition car- riers, jolted over routes that were even worse than China's roads on lurching caisson' carts; marched, singing as I went, with intrepid infantrymen, and wound tight my lint on the sore-torn arm of a Comrade — and, when we sat in a hastily-sapped trench at eventide, awaiting orders, discussing the calls that Kuroki had sent for assistance that could not be given, Tanaka San came and offered me cigarettes.

As he left he shook hands; he intended to give his life for the Tenshi Sama that night.



It was a sight never to be forgotten. From the shelter of d Chinese burial mound near the base of the hill the flashing tongues of fire were seen plainly. The blue-black of the summer night was lit by the occasional flash and flame of breaking shrapnel. Machine guns rattled and rifles rolled, their line of flashes showing like the serrated sides of a massive comb of fire, and. beyond, a column of light was lifted into the dull blue as the far-away searchlights of Liaoyang were turned skyward.

Dull shadowy shapes moved at the hilltop, and, from the hiding places of the millet field came crowd after crowd, crouched and irregular, of rapidly-moving soldiery. They were like an army of gnomes coming from a mysterious blackness. Across the open space to the entanglements the shadowy gnomes ran. and from the hills came flash after flash. The noise became deafening, l^ut soon the ear be- came accustomed to the roll. The noises which pierced the sore-tried drums were the shrieks, blood-curdling cries of the soldiers caught in the tangled wires and the barbarous pits. The clustered entanglements were thick with struggling men; no longer gnomes, but humans whose loud-voiced cries of pain stirred the heart.

Now see ! There were accumulating groups on the grassy incline beyond the wires. More joined them. How they passerl the thick-strewn wires and the rows of closelv-sunken pits is more than I can tell. They were surging up the hill.

Oh, the horror of it all! With wildly swaying arms, men staggered and fell, clutching madly at the arass roots in ihe a2'<niv of death: rifles and swor