In the end the Russians fled with their guns. Twice men and horses with the batteries were shot down, and twice they were replaced under fire. Had the right flank of the Japanese been as fortunate as the left, these guns would have been added to the trophies of the seven days’ fight. This is the short record of the Okasaki Brigade. It is typical of the Japanese infantry, and will serve to show what the unhappy Russians had to contend against. Chapter XL TO PORT ARTHUR. The reader is now asked to transport himself on the magic carpet of his imagination to that great fortress at the Southern extremity of the Kwantung Peninsula, whose occupation by Russia must be regarded as the _fons et origo_ of the war. I have already described how little the Mikado’s strategists suspected that Port Arthur was capable of prolonged resistance against determined and repeated assault; how materially their plan of campaign would have been modified had their calculations been more accurate; and yet how essential it was to their complete command of the sea that this ice-free port should pass into their hands. It was on October 8th, a month after his retreat from Liao-yang, that General Kuropatkin exhorted the army in Mukden to renewed efforts, by the assurance that the time had come for a triumphant advance, and that the Czar had at length given him a sufficient force to command victory. But we know that the dismayed and distracted Ministers at St. Petersburg had commanded the General to strike one last despairing blow for the relief of the fortress. We know, also, that on the following day Field-Marshal Oyama was obliged, by the seriousness of the Russian movements, to engage in battle, although his own desire had been to refrain from action until the expected news of the fall of Port Arthur had arrived. In their estimate of the garrison’s capacity for further resistance, the Russians were more correct than their foes, for had he carried out his predilection, Oyama would have lingered in his position till the dawn of the New Year. As will be shown in the following chapters, the condition of the stronghold was by no means so desperate as was imagined by friend and enemy alike; and, as a matter of fact, the surrender, when it did come, was, in the opinion of many competent to arrive at a verdict, premature, and not the occasion of sheer necessity.