They are brave men these Russians, and face death unflinching. Another rush--another wild scrimmage of steel and lead and human forms, and all that is left of the grey line tumbles like a wave over the hill. The slope is strewn with dead. Even now there is no pause in the Japanese advance. Closing their broken ranks they run to the crest of the hill, and standing boldly on the sky-line raise their rifles to the shoulder. Not until I passed over this dreadful hill could I realise what was happening in the ravine beyond. Here were trenches and gullies out of which the enemy were fleeing into the wood and along the valley hidden by low hills. The dead lay everywhere--in the trenches, in the gullies, in the valley and in the wood--shot down by the rifles on the hill. Few escaped that terrible battue. A score of fugitives we saw running for life out of this valley of the shadow of death. They had thrown aside great coat and rifle. Now and then a man would fall forward and rise no more; here and there a man would stumble and rise to limp along painfully. The hurricane of lead followed close on their tracks. West of this ravine out of which the enemy ran in ones and twos and threes the two Russian batteries were still at their ineffectual work, and a large force of cavalry and infantry were massed. The front of the plain near Bastion Hill was black with them. After a time they moved. Column after column passed behind a grove of firs into a village at the foot of the Northern heights. Had the retreat begun? Outside the village they halted and faced to the front. Were they about to deliver a counter attack? We looked again and saw a column return and march away into the mountains. From the East along the plain beyond came more Russians--infantry and cavalry and guns. They, too, crossed the stream and made slowly for the hills. Two batteries with an escort of Cossacks and infantry came from the village and moved Eastward as if to meet some unseen danger where guns had been booming solemnly all day. There was much marching and counter-marching that brought to the lips of the observer the military adage: “Order, counter-order, disorder.” Doubtless all these perplexing movements of the enemy had their meaning. To us they admitted of one interpretation. The Russian attack had failed all along the line and the retreat had begun. Chapter XXXIV A HARD-WON VICTORY.