miles to the northward along the slopes of Mount Sampson, in order to get a good view of the bay, clear of the northern spur of the Nanshan Heights, just to make assurance doubly sure; but it was scarcely necessary to point out to him the wildly plunging hulls of our ships to make him understand the hopelessness of the case, and that once clearly established, we hurried back to Headquarters to make our report.
Oku, however, was not the man to be deterred by weather, or indeed anything else. Finding that the projected assault was impossible for the moment, he resolved to begin the bombardment with his own guns, doing the best he could with them, unaided, and accompanying the bombardment with what he termed “a demonstration in force,” in order to bring out the Russians and compel them to man their defences while exposed to the fire of our guns. Thus, by a curious combination of circumstances, it appeared that at last I was to be afforded the opportunity of seeing what a land battle was like.
Naturally, I volunteered my services in any capacity where I could be made useful, and the general eagerly closed with my offer. He was particularly anxious to obtain the exact range of certain of the Russian positions without being obliged to fire any trial shots, and he asked me if I could do this for him, seeing that I had already done similar work quite recently; and I told him that I could, and would, with pleasure, if such a thing as a box sextant or an azimuth compass was to be found in camp. Somewhat to my surprise it turned out, upon inquiry, that no such things were to be had. I therefore had recourse to what is known among engineers as a “plane table,” which I was obliged to extemporise; and with this apparatus, used in conjunction with a carefully measured line, three hundred yards in length, I was soon able to supply the information required. The whole device was, of course, of a very rough-and-ready description, but I was greatly gratified when the first shots were fired, to see the shells drop upon the exact spots aimed at.
The task which General Oku had undertaken, and which he must accomplish before an advance could be made by him upon Port Arthur, was an exceedingly difficult one. As has already been said, he effected a landing at a point near Yentoa Bay, distant some sixty miles north-east of Port Arthur as the crow flies. From thence he must needs make his way to Port Arthur overland, since there was no such thing for him as getting there by sea. About half-way on his journey occurred the isthmus of Kinchau, which is only about two miles wide, and which he must traverse on his way. A neck of land two miles wide is no great matter to fortify, a fact which the Russians speedily demonstrated. To march along such a narrow strip of land, with sixteen thousand resolute armed men saying you Nay, would be difficult enough, in all conscience, were that strip of land level; but unhappily for the Japanese it was not so, the Nanshan Heights running through it from north to south, like a raised backbone, leaving only a very narrow strip of low ground on either side of it. Nor was this the only difficulty which the Japanese had to contend with, for, some three miles north-east of the narrowest part of the isthmus, towered Mount Sampson, over two thousand feet in height, commanding the entire neighbourhood and affording an ideal position for the Russian batteries. Then, at the foot of Mount Sampson lay the walled city of Kinchau, which the Russians had seized and fortified; and, finally, there were the Nanshan Heights, upon the crest of which the Russians had constructed ten forts, armed with seventy guns, several of which were of 8-inch or 6-inch calibre, firing shells of from two hundred to one hundred pounds weight.
To attempt to pass these several positions while they were in the hands of the Russians would have been simply courting annihilation; the first task, therefore, was to capture them. This, so far as Mount Sampson was concerned, had been done when I arrived upon the scene; but there still remained Kinchau and the Nanshan Heights to be taken; and each of these threatened to be an even tougher piece of work than the storming of Mount Sampson; for the Russians, after their experience of the extraordinary intrepidity of the Japanese when storming the mountain, had adopted every conceivable means to make the heights impregnable.
First of all, there were the ten forts with their seventy guns lining the crest of the heights, in addition to which the Russians had two batteries of quick-fire field artillery and ten machine-guns. Next, in front of the forts, all along the eastern slope of the heights—which was the side from which attack was possible—there was row after row of shelter trenches, solidly roofed with timber covered with earth, to protect the occupants from artillery fire. Below these again the Russians had dug countless circular pitfalls, about ten feet deep, shaped like drinking cups, with very narrow bottoms, each pit having at its bottom a stout, upright, sharpened stake upon which any hapless person, falling in, must inevitably be impaled. They were, in fact, an adaptation of the stake pitfalls employed by many African and other natives to capture and kill big game. These pits were dug so close together that, of a party of stormers rushing up the slope, a large proportion must inevitably fall in, or be unwittingly pushed in by their comrades. Passages between these pits were purposely left here and there, but they were all mined, each mine being connected to one of the forts above by an electric cable, so that it could be exploded at any moment by merely pressing a button. And that moment would of course be when the passage-way was crowded with Japanese. And, lastly, at the foot of the hill there was a great maze of strongly constructed wire entanglements, during the slow passage of which the hapless stormers would be exposed to a withering rifle and shell fire. Thus the task which the Japanese had to perform was, first to pass through the wire entanglements at the foot of the hill; next, to achieve the passage of the staked pits and the mined ground between them—exposed all the time, be it remembered, to a terrific fire from the forts and trenches above; next, to take line after line of trenches; and, finally, to storm the forts on the crest of the heights—a task which, I frankly admit, seemed to me impossible.
I must confess that my first impressions of a land battle were disappointing. I had expected to see the Japanese march out and storm the heights under cover of the fire of their own guns. And, as a matter of fact, they did march out, but there was no storming of the heights; I had momentarily forgotten that what I was witnessing was merely a “demonstration.” I presume it served its purpose, however, for the General and his staff seemed to be perfectly satisfied with the result; and in any case it had the effect intended of compelling the Russians to man their trenches under the fire of the Japanese guns, which, feeble though they were as compared with those of the enemy, must have inflicted severe punishment upon the packed masses of infantry who swarmed into the trenches to repel what they had every reason to suppose was a genuine attack. But the Japanese—closely watched by a Russian captive balloon, which was sent up directly our troops were seen to be in motion—having compelled the Russians to turn out and expend a considerable quantity of ammunition in comparatively innocuous long-range shooting, calmly marched back again about three o’clock in the afternoon, about which time the firing ceased. While it lasted, however, it was hot enough to bring on heavy rain, and the day ended with a tremendous downpour, which converted the hillsides into a network of miniature cascades, and must have been exceedingly unpleasant for any of the Russians whom expediency and watchfulness compelled to remain in the trenches.
With nightfall the gale increased in fury; but the rain had produced at least one good result; it had laid the dust most effectually while it had made but little mud, for the thirsty earth seemed to absorb the water almost as fast as it fell; also it cooled the air considerably, which was all to the advantage of the Japanese, who would have the strenuous work of climbing the hill, while it would tend to chill and benumb the Russians, who would be compelled to remain comparatively inactive in the sodden trenches. Whether it was this consideration, or the fact that the barometer was rapidly rising, or a combination of both, I cannot say, but about ten o’clock that night the word went round that a general attack upon the Russian works was to be made as soon as possible after midnight.
Chapter Fourteen.
THE STORMING OF NANSHAN HEIGHTS.
By midnight a change of weather had occurred; the wind, which at ten o’clock in the evening had been blowing harder than ever, suddenly subsided, the air grew close, almost to suffocation, and an immense black cloud settled down upon the summit of Mount Sampson, where it rested broodingly, the sure precursor of a thunderstorm, if I was any judge of weather lore.
The first troops to move consisted of a detachment of the 4th Engineers’ Battalion, who were assigned the perilous duty of blowing down the gates of Kinchau, of which there were four, corresponding to the four cardinal points of the compass. I volunteered to accompany this party, for the task which devolved upon them was one that rather appealed to me; but Oku was most emphatic in his refusal, explaining that he would more than probably require my services at daylight, or shortly afterward, to communicate with the squadron in the offing. Accordingly, I had to stand aside, somewhat unwillingly, and see them march off without me; which was perhaps just as well, for the attempt resulted in failure, and every man who participated in it was killed.
