Silence, blankness, death. At first I could see no life, but the officer spoke a low word--here all words are whispers as they are beside the couches of those about to leave this world--and four spots on the wall that had seemed monotonous and brown as the shale moved. Four simple, peasant faces with the star of Nippon above looked at me. Then one, attracted by something beyond, suddenly kneeled, seized the rifle beside him, leveled it through a chink and pulled the trigger. That deadly rip sawed its knot. Boldened by the presence of soldiers kneeling as I was, I began to look around. A groan, first aspirate, then low, as of an asthmatic man snoring, brought my eyes across the bag-protected dragon’s mouth and I saw two figures kneeling above a third. Presently the two lifted the third into a stretcher and filed past me with it. I saw a face blood-dabbed, the lips piteously moving. A bandage across the eyes saved me the worst. The officer beckoned for me to peek through the farther hole. The incident was but a bit of the day’s work for him. I followed and saw a shattered field glass under the parapet. It told the story. He was--had been--a non-commissioned officer in charge of the sentry squad and was looking across at the Russians when a sharpshooter spotted the glass. I felt that I was hurt more than he, for I lay awake thinking of it much of that night, only to remember that the surgeon-general had told me that a man shot through the brain is instantly unconscious, though his lips move and he moans for minutes. “Each day--how many?” I asked the officer. “Twenty.” “And how many days?” “Fifty-nine.” “How many to take the fort?” “Four thousand six hundred and fifty-three.” “With each night a battle to resist a sortie?” “Yes. Each night a sortie, each night a battle.” “Thus--by night--how many to hold this awful place?” “Since the beginning? Perhaps a regiment, perhaps a few more.” He motioned me to the corner hole--the hole through which a minute before the bullet had sped into the officer’s eye. I emulated neither bullet nor officer, but at a respectful two feet glimpsed a ridge ghastly and glimmering in the sun like any other ridge in this hell hole. Quite near enough to reach in a short dash--200 yards, the officer said--a row of sandbags were backed business-like toward me. Between us were five heaps of blue clothes, four in a huddle and one a bit off--Russian dead killed in the battle of Hatchimakiyama four days ago in the zone where nothing lives. Grass withers there. Vermin alone germinate. Behind those sandbags and behind these men crouch and have crouched every minute for two months hunting game the most lordly and the most cunning, the most deceitful and the most contemptible, the boldest and the fiercest, the most inspired and the most depraved this earth can boast.