from the Yalu fight, it required a man to keep himself reined down
to a fox-trot. It was color, war-color, this back-throw from the
weltering fields. Even this stopped, and Kuroki seemed hung forever in
the hills about Fengwangcheng. The civilians breathed hard those weeks,
and lived in an atmosphere burned from human rage. Always excepting
Trollope, the Blue Boar, who had a feeling for China. He studied the
deep, rutty Chinese roads through the hills (back of the army), some of
them worn into formidable ravines--eroded by bare human feet and the
showers of centuries. There were strange little shrines and monasteries
high in those grim hills, and Trollope filled a note-book with their
names and history. There are strata of mystery under the cuticle of
China of which the raw young mind of the white man can only conceive a
tithe--and then only in the ecstasy of concentration. And what names
he found--Road of the Purple Emperor; Spring of the Whispering Spirit;
Cascade of the Humming-bird’s Wing; Cataract of the Sombre Clouds;
Grotto of the Adulteress’ Death--not names of mere flowery choosing,
but names made florid by the necessities of a people whose history is
so long that a poetic glamour has fallen upon it. And the Blue Boar
found much to eat of a weird flavory sort, and kept his poundage.
What strategy was this which held a big, fat, pompous army inactive
through a golden month of campaigning like this June? Bingley exclaimed
that Kuroki was so inflated by the Yalu victory that he was content
to hunt butterflies for the rest of the summer. The rumble of real
war reached the writers from time to time. Apparently, the other
Japanese generals were not like this gray-haired Fabius--Kuroki of
the first army. A man named Oku, it was reported, had landed a second
army at Pitsewo, half-way down the east coast of Liaotung, had bored
straightway across some devilishly steep passes and cut off the
fortress, Port Arthur, from the mainland. The story of this fight was
insufferable poison to the white men with Kuroki. It had taken place
on a narrow neck of land, where sits high the town of Kinchow, joining
the little peninsula of the fortress to the big Liao peninsula above.
The rock-collared neck of land is memorable now by a hill called
Nanshan--the battle’s name. Oku burned five thousand dead after the
fight, but he had cut off Port Arthur for the siege, and made possible
the landing of one Nogi with a third Japanese army at Dalny--cheap at
twice the price. Japanese gunboats and torpedoes at sea on the west had
helped Oku get the strangle-hold on the neck of land, while a Russian
fleet had bombarded from the bay on the east. What torture to believe
this--that at last in the history of the world armies and navies had
met in a single action! It was almost unthinkable to be camping with
Kuroki in the ancient Chinese hills, while such a panorama unfolded for
the eyes of other men--a battle such as the gods would put on flesh to
witness.
Finally the word was brought in by the Chinese, who knew all things,
that this jumping-bean, Oku, had left the fortress to Nogi and the
third army, and leaped north to join a fourth army, under Nodzu,
who had effected a perfect landing at Takushan. Oku whipped poor
Stackelberg on the journey, Telissu being the historic title of this
incident of his flying march. Thus Yalu, Nanshan, and Telissu were
fought without even a smell of smoke for Bingley, Feeney, Finacune,
Trollope, and others. It is to be noted that even Trollope blanched at
the great war story the world missed by not letting him in on Nanshan.
That was one battle for a Tolstoi. The English civilians sat together
on a breezy, sweet-scented hill and watched the sun go down on one of
those June evenings. Feeney was writing, the pad resting upon his knee.
“What did you say was the name of your new book?” Finacune inquired.
“‘Sitting Tight with Kuroki; or, The Wild Flowers of Manchuria,’”
grumbled the old man.
Into the group presently came Major Inuki, the Japanese officer
assigned to watch over the correspondents, to see that none escaped, to
see that none learned anything but generalities, to furnish unlimited
courtesy and apologetic ramifications that stretched from Kirin to Port
Arthur. Inuki also supplied universes of unverifiable information,
having to do with vague Japanese miracles and vast Russian casualties.
He took off his hat now and bowed all around, inhaled a long breath
with a hiss through his sparkling teeth, and snuffled violently.
“It iss more dan quite possible we will remain here for to-morr’, my
dear fren’s. In such case would it not be of good to instruk your
servan’s to ereck the tents--more stolidity?”
Feeney reached over and gravely clutched the flapping trouser-leg of
his Chinese coolie. “Jean Valjean,” he said, “you are instruk to ereck
tents--more stolidity.”
“Me plentee slabee,” said Jean.
The odor of supper was abroad in the camp of the noncombatants, and the
twilight was deep in the valley of young corn. Feeney and Finacune ate
in silence. These two were closer together--close as only two male
adults can be who have lived long alone in broad areas, sharing toil
and irritation and peril; apart from women, but akin in memories and
ambition. Feeney had ridden with the greatest of the nineteenth-century
generals. He was being herded now close to war, but out of range of
any good to his calling. He was thinking of Nanshan--what a battle to
have added to his string! Finacune was thinking of the world’s greatest
woman--how she had come down like a spirit to the billiard-room that
last night in Tokyo--and with what exacting zeal she had caused him and
the others to cable away the last vestige of glory from the name she
bore.
“Blot up another piece of tea, Feeney,” he muttered, “and cheer up.”
“I was just about to suggest, my vivid young friend, that if you
spilled any more gloom on this outfit, I should burst into tears,”
Feeney replied.
There was a long silence. “What?” said Feeney.
“I’m a hare-lipped cock-roach, if it isn’t wonderful!” Finacune
observed in an awed tone.
“What?”
“Suppose now--just now--suppose a white woman--all in a soft summer
gown and blowing golden hair--should walk through this camp? Think of
it!”
“I did--twenty years ago,” said Feeney.
“Think of it now,” Finacune persisted raptly, leaning back against
his saddle with a pot of tea in his hand. “The mere sight of her
would jam a sweetheart or a wife, or both, into the brain of every
man present--the first kiss or a last, dim light somewhere, a word
or a caress--the unspeakable miracle that comes to every man some
time--that of a woman giving herself to him!... Ah, that’s it, you old
crocodile! It would all come back on live wires--if a woman walked
through here--to each man his romance--hot throats, dry lips, and
burning eyes. The world holds a woman for us all--even for you, yoked
to the war-hag; and if memories were tangible, the right woman would
sweep in upon us to-night from five continents and seven seas. A woman!
The mere name is a pang to us lonely devils out here in the open,
where we blister with hate because we are not allowed to smell blood.
Hell!--one would think I had just broken out of a gas-house.”
“Twenty years ago----” Feeney remarked.
“Hark, listen to that young American sing----”
“You listen to me, young man,” Feeney said forcefully. “These lines,
with which I am about to cleanse you from carnality are by my young
friend Kipling:
“White hands cling to the tightened rein,
Slipping the spur from the booted heel.
Tenderest voices cry, ‘Turn again,’
Red lips tarnish the scabbarded steel;
High hopes faint on the warm hearthstone--
He travels the fastest who travels alone.”
“‘Sing the heretical song I have made,’” Finacune added, entirely
uncooled.... “I’ve heard fat London club men expatiate for hours on
what they might have done if they hadn’t married--the beasts! They
couldn’t talk that way to us, sons of Hagar, out here in this unsexed
wilderness! I’d tell ’em what it would mean to me--to be married to
_one_ woman! It would mean more to me to be allowed to listen to
whispered revelations from one woman’s lips--than----”
“Dam’ you, quiet down!”
“Guess I better had.”
“Shall we have a hand at crib?” Feeney asked softly.
“Not now--please.”
There was a dusky splash of red in the sky beyond the western hills,
and a faint red foam above. The evening was soft and sweet, and tobacco
as fragrant as tropical islands.
“Gad! I’m red-blooded,” Finacune murmured after a moment. “I could
squeeze milk out of a pound note. I’d like to see a dog-fight. If
there’s a man-fight to-morrow, I’ll throttle Nookie-san, slide down
into the stoke-hold, and see how this new brand of fighter shovels
hell.”
“If you leave the woman behind,” Feeney grumbled, “I’ll go with you.”
“A man is an awful animal--when he’s fit as I am,” Finacune added. “The
gang is certainly moonstruck to-night. Listen to that ungodly American
sun-spotter sing.”
“There is an island fair, set in an eastern sea;
There is a maid keeping her tryst with me,
In the shade of the palm, with a lover’s delight,
Where it’s always the golden day or the silvery night--
... My star will be shining, love,
For you in the moonlight calm,
So be waiting for me by the eastern sea
In the shade of the shelt’ring palm.”
“That’s just the point--her star’ll be shining--only, it may not,”
Finacune whispered.
Feeney disdained to answer. Presently Major Inuki appeared again and
announced guilelessly:
“Gentlema’--my dear fren’s, our gen’ral express himself prepare to
greet your illustrious peersonages--one and every one--in his quarters
at once. Would you be deigned to follow my poor leadership?”
“Holy Father!--where’s my dress-suit?” Feeney asked with a start.
“Such an honor does not increase our chances for watching the next
battle at close-range,” observed Finacune.
Nookie-san led them through the dust past innumerable battalions, until
on a rising trail the sentries became as thick as fire-flies. After a
twenty-minute walk they reached the summit of a commanding hill. At the
entrance of a large tent paper-lanterns were hung, and below in the
light Kuroki’s staff was gathered. Felicitations endured for several
moments; then an inspired hush dominated all. The flap of the tent was
drawn aside, and a small, gray-haired man of stars emerged stiffly. His
eyes were bent toward the turf and thus he stood motionless beneath the
lanterns for several seconds.
“General Kuroki,” spoke Inuki in a low voice.
The general raised his eyes for just an instant--great, tired, burning,
black eyes with heavy rolled lids--bowed slightly, then backed into the
tent.
“Now, there’s a man with no carnal lust in him,” Feeney commented to
his companion. “He has commanded his wife and family not to write him
from Japan, lest their letters distract attention from his work at
hand.”
“And he drowned a thousand men crossing the Yalu,” remarked Finacune.
Bingley passed them with the remark, “I wonder if God has the dignity
of Kuroki?”
* * * * *
Long afterward, when silence and stars lay upon the hills, there was
still a low whispering in the tent of Feeney and Finacune.
“I wonder where the great frieze coat is this night?” came with a yawn
from the old man.
“God knows,” Finacune replied. “Alone in the dark somewhere--unearthing
great tales to be printed under a strange name. If any one finds them,
it will be Dartmore, and his roots will wither because they are not
in the _Review_. Or----” The little man halted suddenly. He had been
about to add that a woman was apt to find them. Instead he said, “Alone
in the dark somewhere, hiding from the wrath of the world--unless
somebody’s hunted him down to tell him that he’s clean and desirable
again.”
“I’d like to see the great frieze coat this night,” said Feeney in a
listless tone, as if he had not listened to the other.
“I’d like to have been the one--to find him for her.”
“There never was a nobler thing done for a woman--than Routledge did,”
the old man went on, after a pause.
“There never was a nobler woman,” breathed the florid one.
SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER
FEENEY AND FINACUNE ARE PRIVILEGED TO “READ THE FIERY GOSPEL WRIT IN
BURNISHED ROWS OF STEEL”
As a matter of fact, Kuroki was only waiting for Oku and Nodzu to join
him in the great concentration upon Liaoyang under Oyama. This battle
was planned to finish the Russians in the field, as Togo was to do at
sea, and Nogi in the Fortress. Roughly, the Japanese now stretched
across the peninsula from the mouth of the Liao to the mouth of the
Yalu--a quarter of a million men with eyes on Liaoyang--Kuroki on the
right, Nodzu in the centre, Oku on the left. Oyama polished his boots
and spurs in Tokyo, preparing to take his rice and tea in the field as
soon as it was heated to the proper temperature.
Late in June, Kuroki awoke and began to spread like a gentle flow of
lava, filling the hither defiles of the great Shanalin range, making
ready to take the stiff and dreadful passes which the Russians had
fortified as the outer protection of Liaoyang. Right here it must
be interpolated that Bingley had cut Kuroki for Nodzu’s fourth army
a few days before, when the two forces had touched wings for a day.
The “Horse-killer” was scarcely gone before Kuroki encountered one of
the toughest and pluckiest foes of his stupendous campaign, General
Kellar, who gave him terrific fights at Fenshui and Motien passes, and
tried to take them back after they were lost. Again at Yansu, a month
later, the doughty Kellar disputed the last mountain-trail to the city,
and Kuroki had to kill him to get through.... The army was growing
accustomed to the civilians, and these were days of service for the
correspondents. It was given them now to see the great fighting-machine
of Kuroki--that huge bulk of flying power--lose its pomp and gloss and
adjust itself to the field. It faded into the brown of the mountains,
took on a vulpine leanness and a nerveless, soulless complacence, like
nothing else in the world. Food was king; fighting was the big-game
sport; toil was toil, and death was not the least of benefits. It was
now August, and Kuroki’s part in the Liaoyang preliminaries finished.
A month later the battle was on.... In the gray morning light of the
twenty-ninth of August, the sound of distant batteries boomed over the
Shanalin peaks to the ears of the correspondents. Finacune leaped up
with a cry:
“Liaoyang is on! And what are we doing away off here?”
“Smokin’ our pipes in the mountings,” Feeney answered huskily, reaching
for a match, “‘an’ breathin’ the mornin’ cool.’”
“We’re lost,” Finacune declared bitterly. “I can hear the London
experts howling, ‘Where’s Kuroki and his lost army?’”
“Lost, is it? Hush! Come near me, young man. We’re lost, but destined
to appear in good time,” Feeney whispered. “I’ll bet you an oyster-stew
to a dill-pickle that we are the flankers. We’re relegated off here to
cross the river when the moon’s right, and to bore in at the railroad
behind the city, while Oyama and Kuropatkin are locking horns in front.”
Old Feeney, wise in war, had hit upon the strategy before the others;
although any expert familiar with the terrain would thus have planned
the taking of the city. That night Kuroki camped on the south side
of the Taitse; and on the morning of the second day following was
across with seventy thousand men. This by the grace of a corps of
insignificant-looking engineers, busy little brown chaps who worked
a miracle of pontooning--conquered a deep and rushing river without
wetting a foot in Kuroki’s command. There had been rains, too, and
between the showers, far salvos of cannon rode in from the west on the
damp, jerky winds.
There is no place so good as here to drop a conventional figure of
the Liaoyang field. The strategy of the battle is simple as a play in
straight foot-ball. Japanese and Russian linesmen are engaged in a
furious struggle south and southeast of the city. Imagine Kuroki, the
Japanese half-back, breaking loose with the ball and dashing around the
right end (crossing the Taitse River) and boring in behind toward the
Russian goal--the railroad. This threatens the Russian communications.
If the Russian full-back, Orloff, cannot defend the goal, the whole
Russian line will be jerked up and out of the city to prevent being
cut off from St. Petersburg. This leaves the field and the city to the
Japanese. Here is the simplest possible straight line sketch of the
city, river, railroad, and the position of the fighters when the battle
began; also, shown by the arrow, the sweep of Kuroki’s now-famous
end-run. [See drawing on next page.]
The midnight which ended August found the intrepid flanker launched
straight at the Russian railroad at the point called the Yentai
Collieries, nine miles behind the city.
“We’re locked tight in the Russian holdings this minute,” Finacune
whispered, as he rode beside the grim veteran.
“Where did you think we were--on some church steps?” Feeney asked.
[Illustration]
It looked a dark and dangerous game to the dapper little man. The
lure of action, so strong at Home, often turns cold at the point
of realization. Finacune had the nerves which are the curse of
civilization, and he felt the chill white hand of fear creeping along
these sensitive ganglia just now in the dark.
“I haven’t a thing against Kuropatkin--only I hope he is a fool for a
night,” he observed presently. “Somehow, I don’t feel cheerful about
the fool part. He _must_ hear us tramping on his back door-steps this
way. Why can’t he spare enough men from the city to come out here and
sort of outflank the flanker?”
“That’s just his idea,” Feeney replied, “but don’t forget that Oyama
will keep him so dam’ busy below that it will be hard for him to match
us man for man and still hold on. However, remember he’s got the
position, and he won’t need to match the Japanese--quite.”
As a matter of fact, Kuropatkin’s far-flung antennæ had followed
Kuroki well. The Russian chief, knowing the strength of his front
position on the city, had determined to slip back and crush Kuroki
with an overwhelming force, leaving only two corps of Siberians, under
Zurubaieff, to hold off Nodzu and Oku from the inner defenses of
Liaoyang. General Orloff, who was in command at the Yentai Collieries,
where Kuroki’s flanking point was aimed, was under orders to attack the
Japanese in flank at the moment Kuropatkin’s main force appeared to
hit the Japanese in full. There was the constant roar of big guns in
Orloff’s ears in that dawning of September first--a rainy dawn. Also
his own troops were moving along the railroad. Another thing, there had
been a vodka-train broken into the night before by his own men.
Orloff thought he saw Kuropatkin coming, and set out prematurely.
Kuroki was concealed in the fields of ripe millet, and turned to the
work of slaughter with much enthusiasm, wondering at the weakness of
the enemy. This slaughter of Orloff, which lost the battle for the
Russians, Feeney and Finacune saw.
“There’s eighteen burnt matches in your coat pocket, my young friend,”
said Feeney, “and your pipe would light better if you put some smokin’
in it--in the bowl, y’know. For what do you save the burnt matches?”
Finacune grinned shyly. “Wait till the fire starts--I’ll be warmer.
I’m always like this at first--like the little boy who tried to cure
bees with rheumatism.”
“Something’s wrong with the Russians,” Feeney declared in low
excitement. “We should all be dead by this time--if they are going to
whip Kuroki. Oh, war--war is a devil of a thing!” he added flippantly.
“We’re crushing the farmers’ grain.”
“Shut up, you fire-eater. Haven’t you any reverence? I’m preparing
myself for death.”
That instant they heard a low command from an unseen Japanese officer,
and a long drawn trumpet-cry. The Japanese leaped up from the grain.
All was a tangle. Feeney, grabbing Finacune’s arm, seized the moment to
break from Major Inuki and the others, and rushed forward to the open
with the infantry.
“Come on,” he said excitedly. “We’re foot-loose! Come on, my little
angel brother, and play tag with these children!... ‘Onward, Christian
Soldiers!’”
Never a wild rose of boyhood smelled half so sweet to Finacune as the
ancient soil of Asia that moment, but he was whipped forward by certain
emotions, to say nothing of Feeney and the avalanche of Japanese. They
reached the edge of the grain and met the first gust of Orloff’s rifle
steel. Down they went for the volleys, and that moment perceived a most
amazing trick of a shell. A little knot of ten Japanese were running
forward just before them when there was a sudden whistling shriek. The
ten were lost for a second in a chariot of fire. When it cleared only
one Japanese remained standing.
“That Russian gunner bowled a pretty spare,” grimly observed Feeney.
“Come, get up, lad. The volleys are over.”
“Not this Finacune. I’m not short-sighted. I’m going to hold fast to
this sweet piece of mainland just now. Besides----”
The little man burst into a nervous laugh and glanced at his foot. Then
he stiffened into a sitting posture. Feeney looked him over. His hat
was gone, scalp bleeding, his shirt-sleeve burst open as if it had been
wet brown paper, and the sole of his left shoe torn away clean.
“Queer about that shrapnel,” he mumbled. “I’m interested in shrapnel
anyway. I haven’t got any more toe-nails on that foot than a bee.”
Meanwhile, Kuroki was crushing the Orloff member with a force destined
to wreck the whole Russian nervous-system. Out of the grain he poured
torrents of infantry which smote the Russian column in a score of
places at once.
“Did you ever put your ear to the ground during a battle, Feeney?”
the other asked wistfully. “It sounds aw’fly funny--funnier than
sea-shells. Let’s try.”
Feeney did not answer. He was watching the disorder which swept over
the Russian lines. It had changed into a deluge tossing back toward the
Collieries. There was a fury even in the clouds of powder smoke that
seemingly had nothing to do with the winds. They darted, stretched, and
tore apart from the whipped-line with some devilish volition of their
own.
“There’ll be excitement presently,” the veteran remarked.
The other had risen and was clutching his arm, his bare foot lifted
from the ground. He was properly stimulated by the action, but kept up
a more or less incessant chattering, his brain working as if driven by
cocaine.
“Ex--excitement! This is a sedative, I believe. Let’s lie down, you
bald-headed fatalist----”
“Don’t dare to. Look at your foot. Dangerous below. Ricochets hug
the turf.... Livin’ God! they’re going to throw out cavalry upon us!
They’re going to heave cavalry against Kuroki’s point! Bloom up, little
man. Here’s where the most nerveless of the white races smite the most
nervous of the yellow--and on horses!”
“I’m bloomin’ on one foot,” said Finacune.
Kuropatkin, apprised of Orloff’s error, was thundering his divisions
up the railroad at double-time toward the Collieries, but, despairing
to reach the blundering Orloff in time, had ordered his cavalry
railway-guards to charge the enemy.... They came on now with mediæval
grandeur, a dream of chivalry, breaking through gaps of Orloff’s
disordered infantry--to turn the point of the Japanese flanker.
Splendid squadrons!... A curse dropped from Feeney’s gray lips.
“They’re going to murder the cavalry to put red blood into that rotten
foot-outfit,” he said.
Finacune’s face was colorless. He did not answer. The sound of bullets
in the air was like the winging of a plague of locusts. Often the two
huddled together, allowing a gasping battalion to leap past them toward
the front. Kuroki was breaking his command into fragments and rolling
them forward like swells of the sea. His front-rankers dropped to their
knees to fire; then dashed forward a little way to repeat--all with
inhuman precision. Feeney’s field-glass brought out their work. In
a mile-long dust-cloud, the Russian cavalry thundered forward like a
tornado.