To hide the earth of this digging was the appalling task. It was done gloriously. The advance sappers threw their first trickle of mole-like progress backward between their legs from the furious indent of their tiny spades. Helpers behind immediately deepened and widened the rivulet of shelter thus begun. The infantrymen, closing in at daybreak throughout the hot sun, perfected it, but the reserves accomplished the new thing. As fast as the earth was displaced they carried it with gabions and bamboo stretchers back through the zigzag lines behind the mountain range which concealed their own heavy guns. Here, parallel with the Russian defense, mile after mile of fresh-smelling mounds slipped up through the cautious, industrious months following that frightful August. Passing across the valley through these tunnels, deep enough to shelter regiments, three months after the Aceldama of midsummer, one could, in safety, be frowned on by hostile batteries, distant three hundred yards, or look into the plain gridironed with cunning trenches, and, like the foe above, see no evidence of life. The maize-stalks hid the trench turnings, and though the plain was alive with its thousands of armed men, even the practiced eye that had just been among them could not tell where they lay. Where had the output of that enormous digging gone? As well ask the chipmunk where he puts the dirt from his hole. It was a new experience for the Russians to fight a foe who could wiggle through the earth as easily as he could cross it, and, underneath, escape the death that he met on top. Both sides had sailors on land. The Japanese emplaced the navy six-inch guns in the bottom of a valley. The army field guns were perched along the peaks in front, from which they could bark down like noisy house-dogs. But the savage bite came from the big guns, a quarter of a mile behind, the location of which was mistaken by the Russians as identical with that of the blustering field-pieces on the ridge. The sailors did not trust alone to the improbability of their hiding-place. They cut out earth the size of a ship’s hull, mended the broken crust with timber balks, and thrust the noses of the six-inchers out of two square openings that might have been turret-holes. Thus, entirely protected, though within easy range of the enemy, they escaped serious injury. This was the most effective Japanese battery; it has become famous for tenacity.