The elder Tossup is a country brewer in Yorkshire. The younger insists that he is an officer and a gentleman and knows how to conduct himself. But a few days ago he was caught, while visiting an outpost with an officer, in a crossfire, and ducked into a trench. The officer tried to reassure him by following into the trench. There, while a battle was raging beyond, and in the presence of all the sublime panorama that surrounds us here the Tossup said: “I hope you will come and visit me in England. We will go to the autumn maneuvers.” The officer, not expert with English, pulled out his dictionary and ran his thumb down the “ma’s.” “man--man--manur” he read. “Ah,” he cried at last, “the autumn manuring! I see, sir, yours is an agricultural country.” Chapter Six 203-METER HILL What Blaine’s unfortunate “three R’s” were to his Presidential campaign “203-Meter Hill” was to the siege of Port Arthur. Risen to the dignity of key to the situation, it had, in an ordnance sense, little to do with the case. It was but one of seven advance posts for final assault. A pimple of progress to the engineer, it was not permanently fortified, did not belong to the primary scheme of defense, and was dominated by three of the finest forts--Etzeshan, Anzushan, and Liaotishan: mountains of the Chair, the Table, and the Lion’s Mane. For three reasons heavy guns could not be mounted there. First, the cost in energy and life would be too vast, because rifles whose barrels alone weigh from two to eight tons each would have to be hauled by hand up 680 feet of rock, a task heroic even in peace. In war, wedged among three magnificently intrenched hostile positions, this would be impossible. Second, even if these heavy guns--only of any value against forts or fleets--had been gotten there, they would have been pounded to pieces within an hour of arrival by the more numerous and better emplaced artillery of the Chair, the Table, and the Lion’s Mane. Finally, heavy guns are never emplaced on mountain peaks in an offensive campaign. “203” had one value--a great one. It was the best point of observation the Japanese had yet had. Line of vision, not line of fire, was what they needed. From “203” they could look into all portions of the harbor that could float a warship, but, what was more essential, they could look around the promontory of Golden Hill into the cove, where the hunted remnant of the Russian fleet had been hiding, at loose anchor, since the disastrous attempt to escape on August 10th. They had no need for better artillery posts than the positions which they had held for four months and from which they had been able to place shells in any spot on the Russian side. [Illustration: _Copyright, 1905, by Collier’s Weekly_ THE HYPOSCOPE Showing Lieutenant Oda looking from 203-Meter Hill through the hyposcope at the Russian fleet in the New Harbor of Port Arthur]