Dawn was at hand. From the mountains on the East stole the grey light that revealed the Japanese steadily advancing--a _mélee_ of men, units, companies, battalions and regiments hopelessly mixed yet impelled by one purpose. In the darkness they had stumbled on the Russian artillery and had captured two guns. While securing these trophies they were thrown into a state of great alarm by the sound of horses. “Cossacks!” was the thought that flashed through everyone’s mind. The Russian cavalry had crossed the plain and were about to make a counter attack! The Japanese infantry turned to meet the charge, and fired volleys into the horses before the discovery was made that it was not Cossacks but terrified and maddened horses of the Russian artillery. At daybreak the hill was in our possession. The remnant of the enemy had fled to the North, and village and fields were heaped up with dead. The forlorn hope had not died in vain. Chapter XXXVII THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW. We were riding over a hill near the Sha-ho. The dead lay upon the slope like livid stains on a green carpet. In the trench--a deep scar across the brow of the hill--was a tangled web of crimson and purple and grey rent asunder by black hands and ashen faces. Three days before I saw the tidal wave of war sweep over this hill of horrors. Out of the clouds came men in blue with rifles in their hands--a company of Japanese. Scattering, they sped down the slope and vanished in a brown cleft; in a moment they appeared once more, racing furiously up the hill. From the earth sprang a grey line tipped with fire and steel. At sight of the Russians the men in blue halted and turned. Were they running away? A sword flashed in the air and the Japanese ranged themselves--a line of blue upon which rushed the grey crest like a tumultuous sea. The waves met and mingled--a heaving flood over which played the lightning of steel. Blade in hand the Russian leader leapt forward to meet his foe. A gleam of light and the point of the Samurai sword pierced his neck. A jet of blood spurted from his nostrils and the steel dropped from his dying grasp. Another moment and the waves divided, leaving the hill flecked with grey forms. Broken and thinned, the blue wave swept on and engulfed the trench where the dead and dying lay. Strenuous days followed laborious nights, when wounded died and living fought. How could anything in that trench be alive! It was an open grave heaped with dead. “I saw his leg move,” protested my interpreter. Prone on his back lay a Russian soldier. His eyes looked into mine. Pillowed on a corpse, his couch was of dead men. In a second we were off our horses and in the trench. His head was covered with clay that was dyed a dark crimson; his open mouth was filled with earth baked hard by the sun. Surely, he must be dead. The eyes sought mine and followed me.