And even this was only the beginning of the end. Already the Japanese had accomplished a herculean task. They had sweated, endured, writhed in agony, died, and they had taken only one battery. Ahead of them still rose, tier on tier, forts and batteries, moats and walls, until the soul grew sick to think that Port Arthur must be bought with sacrifice so vast. But the Japanese did not turn back, did not weep, showed no despair. They came to work, to meals, as cheerfully as ever they had done in the rice paddies. And this, notwithstanding that winter was on them, that the keen, equinoctial gales blew in from both seas, that the thermometer fell to zero and below. They were surrounded by charnel houses of their own making, and protected only by miserable, hasty dugouts shielded from cold and wind by a few broken boughs, light shelter-tents, and hastily packed earth. Death was preferred to a wound, for the wounded had small hope of succor; yet life was cherished and fostered.
Meanwhile the Russians were busy. They devised a new scheme of defense. Kerosene was taken through a subterranean gallery of the Two Dragons into a moat and there poured on piles of straw. Then they waited.
At the fifth grand assault, when the north battery of the East Cock’s Comb was taken, the Two Dragons were simultaneously attacked. A company of Japanese headed for the moat. The kerosene and straw were set on fire and the men who leaped into the moat, expecting to find caponieres as they had found them in the Cock’s Comb, were caught by flame. Many perished miserably. Some valiantly fought the flames, but few survived. These few--that is, the few who do the work in warfare--the few who accomplish that for which the thousands die--made possible the Japanese advance. Through, over, and beyond these few, the Japanese finally entered Port Arthur.
Science is well, up to a certain point. Then it becomes useless and cruel. The genius of the engineer helps the soldier across the valley and to the parapet, but there leaves him in an agony of suspense, over electric mines, under dynamite batteries, crisscrossed by machine guns. If the nerves of this marvelous soldier survive the ordeal, and if his body escapes the flying chunks of steel, he is reserved for the extremity of modern torture--hand-to-hand fighting in scientific warfare. At a moderate distance he tosses balls of guncotton; he closes with stones and stinkpots; he parleys with the bayonet, and finishes with teeth and fists.