Under the parapets of this fort, dominated by all the artillery of the two armies, occurred some of the grimmest fighting that history records. It was at midnight of the second day of final occupation. The black mountains lay behind, the black forts in front, the blacker plain below. A Japanese lieutenant, Oda, asked for a volunteer _Keissheitai_, or certain-death party. Thirty _Keissheitai_ men came forward. Oda put himself at their head and ventured along the bed of the moat toward the rearmost caponiere, with the idea of capturing it. The fort is very long--about one and a half times the length of an ocean liner--so he found room and time for adventure. There was no moon, and the moat was too close to the Russians for them to depress their searchlights sufficiently to illuminate it. In the blackness, halfway down the moat, Oda and his men met a Russian lieutenant prowling with a squad of men behind him, bent on the recapture of the two caponieres which the Japanese had seized. They had it out, not with bullets, but bayonet to bayonet, fist to fist, and even teeth and nails. Oda and the Russian, in locked embrace, reeled back and forth, falling, rising, scratching, first one on top and then the other, each losing sight and control of his men, all of whom were engaged in individual combats just as savage. The two leaders, grappling for an opportunity that each sought, bumping against the walls of the narrow moat, reached, without knowing it, an embrasure which led to the rear of the fort and into the gorge. Tripping over this, not knowing where they were going, the two plunged headlong down the slope. Above frowned two Russian batteries. Beyond rose the great red-capped sky line of the Cock’s Comb. A hundred yards, scratched by the stones, smashed by the shale, they slipped and writhed, until they struck a tiny plateau halfway down the mountain. Here the two, clinched, stopped as might a dislodged stone toppling from its socket. In the struggle Oda had been able to get his right arm free, which he reached over across his enemy’s back, grasping the hilt of his straight, samurai sword. Pulling it halfway out of the scabbard, which was tightly lashed to his waist, he sawed and pulled until the slender, tapering steel had gashed through the Russian’s clothing, full to his backbone. Late the following night, after the sun had gone, Oda crawled into his own trenches at the base of the mountain. His men had been repulsed by a second party of Russians who had made a sortie to relieve the first. But, still the Japanese held the two caponieres in front and the Russians the two in the rear. Oda got no medals nor applause. Two days later a breast-wound which sent him to a hospital in Japan saved his life, for had he stayed he would have certainly gotten himself killed.