Rain pelting in my face wakes me to greet a flash of lightning. I tuck in the rubber blanket, reach for my watch and by the next flash see the hands at seven minutes past three. I snuggle myself into a ball and crunch the rocks closer. Another flash behind and I spasmodically close my eyes, but open them in time to see the mountain side and road below livid. Two horses are lying in the road, killed, I suppose, by the flash. But, no, I remember that a shell laid them out yesterday. Ricalton cries: “They’ve begun.” “No,” I yell, “it’s the storm,” and my voice is lost in the thunder. Is it thunder? Is it cannon? Who can tell? The vivid flashes, too great for artillery, lighting up the whole mountain, come in now on all sides and as fast as the lanyards of a battery could be pulled. The horrid grandeur rises. Prayerfully thankful to be in it I desperately resolve not to run. How the molten sheets drag me from that hole in the rocks! Surely every glass in Port Arthur is leveled here! The next instant the Russian fire will concentrate on the Phœnix. Yes. There it is--a flash from Golden Mount, like a dynamic spark from one electrode to another, pointed this way, lost in the ink of night. A double fear--the fear of shame and the fear of death--consumes me. I shiver. But I grow brave, for I am not alone. Ricalton leaps to his feet, wrapped in the trailing cart cover. “Sublime!” he cries, waves his arms aloft, laughs at the storm. More flashes from the Russian hills, the Japanese answer. The vast night is hideously alive. Artillery flicks as fireflies spark, spits tongues of flame, answering thunder with thunder, lightning with lightning. The rain beats down a torrent. In the intermittent flashes the ugly eye of the searchlight looks in, licks phosphorus about us and ambles off into the valleys, as a cow might run the fur of her tongue over a cocklebur and calmly go to grass. No taste for rocks over there. They are out for softer game. Six more fling their deviltry from the head of Cyclops and down in the valley struggle with mist and rain. Then, ’mid the sky’s and cannon’s belch, as a fairy into the land of demons, a thin red line is tossed gracefully over the valley from the Russian side. It reaches high over the mountains from the sea forts and above the center of the great plain falls, as a sailor casts a halyard over the yardarm on to the deck beyond. In mid-air bursts the _feu de joie_, the delight of fireworks, in war a spy. On other nights this deathly star bomb revealed all secret movements, but now the Japanese have allies in the mist and rain. Neither searchlight nor star bomb can penetrate the storm veil. Now comes the crackle of infantry, followed by the pop, pop, pop, of quick-firers, the clatter of Hotchkiss howitzers, the more sprightly click of Maxims. Another assault--and they have had eleven in a week! Will they win this time? They are going for the Cock’s Comb, whose crest stands out ominously against the sky.