Then I felt that creepy clasp as of a boneless hand. When I closed the door he crept back to his perch. So I left him, noiseless leader of forty millions, swathed in the great Russian chair, lost in the Mayor’s Byzantine house, withered to essence like a tea leaf. And his salary is the same as that of a congressman of the United States. Chapter Five CAMP Before Port Arthur, Headquarters Third Imperial Army, Oct. 9th: We have left the mountain--the Phœnix--where by day we saw artillery duels and by night flashes of lightning illumining the big guns, while the plains stood out under the searchlights. There we could step from our lunch table and, down the cliff, look into the upturned ecstasy of a victorious army, or feel the dull weight of its despair surge in and close upon us. Now we are with the army, part of it. From the Manchurian hut, where we live in insect powder, on tinned beef, biscuit and jam, we go a few rods to a plateau and look into Port Arthur. The path of the army can be traced by beer bottles--Asahi, Yebisu, Kabuta and Saporo--but in all the army there is not a guardhouse. If the company has a man who doesn’t smoke cigarettes he is pointed out as a curiosity; the empty boxes--Peacock, Tokiwa, Pinhead, Old Rip, Cherry and Star--dot the fields thick as the beer bottles; the price of a box is two days’ pay; there is no way to have money sent from Japan to the front, but a field savings bank to take it back; and yet, into this field bank, from the three cents a day pay, in spite of the beer and the cigarettes, over $10,000 has gone since the opening of the campaign. Approach a battery and find a lot of uncouth boys, gentle and friendly as children, curious as savages, as lacking in assertion as a comedian off the stage; you take them for menials, for most Americans in such a place would carry mountains of dignity and be covered with placards, “hands off.” These are expert gunners, handling scientific instruments, and yet simple. Generals the same! It is an unaccountable thing, this naturalness and modesty, like the morality of a man of genius. A paradox? Yes; when you think of what fighters they are! But how does a hen know when to turn her eggs, and where does a girl carry her powder puff?