After some companies of our division had landed with much ado, the storm grew worse and the landing was suspended. The colonel, an aide-de-camp, the interpreter, the chaplain, and myself, accompanied by a handful of guards, crossed the wilderness and wended our way toward Wangchia-tun, fixed as our stopping-place for that night. We busied ourselves with the map and the compass, while the interpreter asked question after question of the natives. I consulted a Chinese-Japanese conversation book, and asked them in broken words, “Russian soldiers, have they come?” to which they replied, “To Port Arthur they have fled.” We were of course disappointed not to encounter the long-looked-for antagonists at once! Seven _ri_’s journey through a sand plain brought us to the willow-covered village Wangchia-tun in the rainy and windy evening, when strange birds were hastening to their roosts. Stupid-looking old men and dirty-faced boys gathered round us like ants and looked at us with curiosity. Long pipes were sticking out from the mouths of the older men; they seemed utterly unconcerned or ignorant of the great trouble in their own country. The filth and dirt of the houses and their occupants were beyond description; we newcomers to the place had to hold our noses against the fearful smells. Military camp though it was in name, we only found shelter under the eaves of the houses, with penetrating smells attacking us from below, and surrounded by large and small Chinese highly scented with garlic! Before our hungry stomachs could welcome the toasted rice-balls, our olfactory nerves would rebel against the feast. We who had succeeded in landing spent our first night in Liaotung in this condition. The spirits of the deceased comrades of ten years before must have welcomed us with outstretched arms and told us what they expected of us. Under tents, half exposed to the cold and wet, the men slept the good sleep of the innocent on millet straw, and an occasional smile came to their unconscious lips. What were they dreaming of? Some there were who sat by the smoky fire of millet straw all the night through, buried in deep thought and munching the remnant of their parting gifts with their lunch boxes hanging from the stone wall. The day was about to dawn, when suddenly thunder and lightning arose in the western sky. Not lightning, but flames of fire; not thunder, but roar of cannon! Furious winds added to the dreariness of the scene; the sky was the color of blood. The great battle of Nanshan! We could not keep still from fullness of joy and excitement. [Illustration: Japanese kanji Ch. V.] THE VALUE OF PORT ARTHUR THAT glorious January 2, of the thirty-eighth year of Meiji, will never be forgotten to the end of time. That happy day of the victorious New Year was doubly crowned by the birth of an Imperial grandson and by the capitulation of Port Arthur! There has never been a New Year in all our history so auspicious and so memorable!