"Warui desu!" I said, which means "He's bad!" and "Gomen nasai," which is Japanese for "Beg pardon." These two phrases never failed to bring a smile instead of the curse that I might have got in any other army in the world. We passed even an officer who seemed and was, no doubt, in a great and just hurry, but even his eyes had to take the dust thrown from Fuji's heels. I pulled the beast in at last on top of a little hill whence I could see the battle-hills of Nanshan. But I cared no more for that field than did Fuji, both of us being too much interested in life to care much for post-mortem battle-fields, and when the rest came up, we rode by Nanshan without turning up its green slopes and on to where the first walled Chinese city I had ever seen lifted its gate-towers and high notched walls in glaring sunlight and a mist of strangling dust. We passed in through the city gates and stopped where I know not. It was some bad-smelling spot under a hot sun, and being off Fuji and in that sun, I cared not. I have vague memories of white men coming by and telling me to come out of the sun and of not coming out of the sun; of horses kicking and stamping near by and an occasional neigh from Fuji hitched in the shade of the city wall and guarded by a Chinaman; of a yellow man asleep on a cart, his unguarded face stark to that sun and a hundred flies crawling about his open mouth; and of an altercation going on between two white men. One said: "Your horse has kicked mine--remove him!" "Move your own," said another, and his tone was that of some Lord Cyril in a melodrama. "Mine was there first." The other took off his coat: "I'm sorry, but I've got to fight you." "Very well, then," said Lord Cyril, stripping, too, and then the voice of a peace-maker that I knew well broke in and in a moment all was still. Takeuchi rode in on a mule. No hitting the dust for the proud feet of Takeuchi then, as I learned, nor afterward, when there were any other four feet that could be made to travel for hire. "I want a 'betto,'" he said--which is Japanese for hostler--"for Fuji." "Whatever need there be for Fuji, the accursed," said I, lapsing into such Oriental phraseology as I had read in books, "buy, and buy quickly--my money is in thy belt." He bought then and kept on buying afterward.