Taku-shan, enshrouded in its light gray dress of smoke, was now ours. But as soon as it came into our possession, all the fortresses of the enemy began concentrating their fire upon our main position on this mountain. Heavy-gun shells, as big as a common water jar,[52] came whizzing like locomotives, causing heavy vibrations in the air. When they exploded with a tremendous noise, a miraculous light glittered where the white smoke rose, and rocks were shattered where the dark cloud hung. It seemed as if the very centre of the earth were shaken, and the bodies of the dead were cut into small fragments. Our position was far from safe. Our detachments occupying the new place could hardly keep their post. If the enemy should try a counter-assault, as they were sure to, how could we keep them in check on such a perilous mountain-top? If we even stretched our necks to look across the slopes into the enemy’s defenses, we were sure to be visited by their fire at once. We could not move a step. One soldier, who was on guard over six field-guns captured on the top, was hit by a whole shell and literally shattered to bits. One piece of his flesh, which flew above our heads and stuck to a rock behind us, was all that was left of him. Another shell fell into a group of soldiers, and twenty-six men became small dust in one minute; the rock that was shattered by this shell buried alive three more. Lieutenant Kunio Segawa was shot through the abdomen on this day; toward evening his end seemed near. His servant and others were nursing him, when his elder brother, Captain Segawa, who knew nothing of his wound, happened to come along and was asked to give his dying brother the farewell drink of water. Whereupon the captain quickly came near to his brother and shouted, “Kunio!” As soon as the dying man heard his dear brother’s voice, as if he had been thinking of him and longing to see him, he opened his dim eyes in the midst of his hard breathing, gazed on his brother’s face, grasped his hand firmly with tears, and for a while both were silent with emotion. The captain said presently: “Kunio, you have done well! Have you anything to say?” and he wiped his dying brother’s face and poured water into his mouth from his water bottle. The younger brother faintly nodded and said, “Dear elder brother!”[53] That was his last word, and soon he started for another world. What was the grief of the surviving brother then! The bystanders could not repress tears of sympathy for both. Two weeks later, in the battle of August 24, the captain followed his beloved brother and joined the ranks of those who were not.