Under the parapet of the north battery, where the forsaken squad was left, I now see the why of the inaction. The twenty or thirty, in half an hour, have thrown up a shallow trench. So this is the meaning of the spade that each man carries at such cost, up those terrific heights. They are fixing themselves for the night. Under cover of darkness the supports will come up, and before dawn the way from valley to parapet will be entirely protected with trenches, so that a whole regiment can be poured up for the final assault without losing a man. As the price of it on the slope there lie thousands of huddled figures. Chapter Fifteen JAPAN’S GRAND OLD MAN--AN INTERLUDE The Itos are the Smiths of Japan. There is one President of the Privy Council, one the chief naval authority and head of the naval board. There are two generals named Ito and statistics alone know how many private soldiers are thus made still more common. The Asahi to-day told of an Ito hanged for a triple murder. In the adjoining column account was made of another Ito decorated by the Portuguese government. The reason, not stated, was that the king of that decrepit monarchy, wishing to assimilate some stray rays of good fortune from this rising sun, chose three men in Japan on whom to bestow his ribbons of mark. These were the Emperor, the Emperor’s son and an old man by the universal name of Ito. A strange circumstance permitted me to ride for an hour one morning in a railway coach with this other Ito--the only Ito. Ambitious of that smartness which can save where any simpleton can spend I procured a second-class ticket from Yokohama to Tokyo, a run that covers some twenty-eight miles in twice as many minutes. The ticket cost fifty-three sen, and as the rate of exchange for American gold here now is 213 you will see that the ride cost less than a quarter. I could have gone first class for seventy-four sen, or ten more American cents--hardly worth the saving. Still, it is more interesting second class. Only foreigners, and Japanese who ape foreigners, ride first class. Japanese railway coaches are of three classes. It is not necessary to experience the third to know it. A look is enough. Red, like the emperor’s, they are the antithesis of imperial. Only in an imperial land, dyed in the ancient belief that certain men are by birth superior to other men, could these third-class coaches exist. They are for the common people. Small as the dummy cars of an intramural railway they are boxed off in sections similar to continental compartments. These are loaded with as many of the riffraff as the station guards can crowd in. Hard seats and plain company with transportation at the mere cost of hauling is the rule there. The fare is thirty sen (fifteen cents). The government, which owns the railway, conducts its business on the theory employed by Japanese merchants--sell to the poor at cost and let the rich pay the profits.