SEVENTEENTH CHAPTERFEENEY AND FINACUNE ARE PRIVILEGED TO “READ THE FIERY GOSPEL WRIT IN BURNISHED ROWS OF STEEL”
Asa 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 andMotien 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 tocross 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.
Kuroki’s now-famous end-run
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. Hemusthear 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’llbe 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 lessincessant 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.
The Cossacks swept into Kuroki’s zone of fire. Feeney heard his companion breathe fast, and turned his head. TheWordman was staring into the heart of the Cossack charge, his fears forgotten, fascinated unto madness. The earth roared with hoofs, and the air was rent with guns. On came the cavalry until it reached Kuroki’s point and halted it; but upon the Cossacks now from the countless Japanese skirmish-lines were hurled waves of flying metal—waves that dashed over the Russian horsemen as the sundered seas rushed together upon Pharaoh’s hosts.
“It’s like a biograph,” came from Finacune.
Kuroki was checked; his van ridden down. The Russian horse, cumbered with its dead, and taking an enfilading fire from half the Japanese command, was now ordered to retire. Only the skeletons of the glorious squadrons obeyed. Kuroki was stopped indeed—stopped to thrust an impediment aside. He rose from his knees, fastened a new point to his plow, and bored in toward the railway upon the strewn and trampled grain-fields. Already the hospital corps was gathering in the endless sheaves of wounded.
“One can tell the dead by the way they lie,” Finacune said vaguely. “They lie crosswise and spoil the symmetry.”
Orloff was steadied a trifle by the cavalry sacrifice, and turned an erratic but deadly fire upon the Japanese.... At this instant Major Inuki pounced upon the two correspondents and carried them back toward headquarters. He made very many monkey-sounds; wasquite unintelligible from excitement; in fact, at the thought of these two being suffered to see so much alone. If their heads had been cameras, straightway would they have been smashed....
Practically they had seen it all. Kuroki’s work for that September day was done. Shortly after the retirement of the cavalry, he received a dispatch from Oyama saying that Kuropatkin had ordered a general retreat. Kuroki’s end-run had won the battle for Oyama; Orloff had lost it for Kuropatkin. The latter, perceiving the havoc at the Collieries when he came up with his big force, decided not to attack the victorious flanker. Instead, he set out for Mukden, and commanded Zurubaieff, the rear-guard, to pull up out of the city, cross the Taitse, and burn his bridges behind him.
“He’s quite a little ornament-merchant, this Kuroki,” Finacune observed that afternoon, holding a very sore foot in his hands.
“He’d put out hell—he’s too cold to burn,” replied Feeney.