This was the high tide of the advance made in August. Nogi paid a frightful price to learn his terrible lesson--that he could not so quickly wipe out a foe thus allied with Nature. The lesson cost him twenty-five thousand men. After the first ghastly assault he sat down with his army and went sensibly and slowly at the enormous task. Instead of storming Port Arthur with his army, he and Kodama saw that he must dig into it. Realizing that Nogi was sure to pass into the fortress through the earth where he had failed to enter above ground, Kodama might well have chuckled as he said that he held the besieged city in the hollow of his hand.
Yet both Kodama and Nogi thoroughly realized what they had to face. The permanent forts of the Russians were built on the advantageous shoulders that projected two-thirds of the way down the slopes. The mountains, fortunately for the Russians, were so situated that, though irregular in detail, yet their line formed a complete semicircle enveloping the city. Making use of these natural advantages, they were able to build a grand fortress with seventeen locks, for every one of which they held the key. The Japanese might spring one of the locks, but the fortress could be instantly closed with any or all of the other sixteen. Each depression between the main shoulders of the mountains was used for the emplacement of a battery. Batteries and forts were connected with barbed-wire entrenchments, and the glaces were made sheer and slippery. Some were formed of concrete, some were built crater-like of a sliding sand, so that a man advancing found himself slipping to the knees and quagmired. Around the great forts moats of unknown depth and width were built. In these moats caponieres were placed to enfilade daring assaulters. Some of the barbed wire was electrically charged, so that men attempting to cut it with nippers were electrocuted. Down the forward slopes of the mountains mines were sunk in the earth; some were exploded by contact with an electric button on the surface, others by direct contact from some tripping man as he passed over the spot. Around two of the forts torpedoes taken from the ships were buried, and their finlike stems were turned into contact flanges projecting from the earth. All these defenses were connected with a network of covered ways; in two places deep tunnels ran from fort to fort, and from all of the principal forts back to the Chinese Wall was a deep tunnel. Behind the wall lay machine guns, the most deadly weapons in modern warfare, sprinkling bullets as a hose sprinkles water.