He was not interested in what I said. He waved an indefinite arm toward the front and replied: “By-m-by they make plenty die off there. Then I go back.” He had not yet learned that he was the General’s Pet. Chapter Twelve COURTING DEATH UNDER THE FORTS Willow tree village, Headquarters Third Imperial Army, Manchuria, four miles from Port Arthur, Oct. 5th: It was in August that the Japanese took the Eternal Dragon, advanced their outposts beyond its walls, threw up trenches, and settled down this inch nearer the coveted goal. In this fearful fight a certain part of the field was taken and retaken seven times, and finally, for strategic reasons, though the fort which was the bone of contention rested with the victors, a piece of dead ground beyond, over which these repeated charges had occurred, lay partly within the Russian lines and partly within our own. Dead bodies mingled with wounded--Russians jowl by cheek with Japanese--lay over it so thick that a man might have walked from one trench to another without touching the earth. The wounded could not be succored, the dead could not be buried except when they lay behind the opposing trenches. Between, no living thing could exist. The lines were but three hundred yards apart--a distance at which even a poor marksman could shoot fatally, and through all the twenty-four hours the two trenches were lined by sharpshooters a rod apart and on the constant lookout. The weather was perfect. By day the sun shone; by night the moon, assisted by searchlights and star shells, kept the plain of death as light as day. The light showed the loopholes of the trenches so well that they could not be used, for the moment a shadow appeared behind one a marksman from the other side would put a bullet through it. The men sighted the hyposcope--an instrument first used extensively at this siege--which is a telescope arranged with mirrors at a reflex angle, so the scope goes over a wall while the eye sees in perfect safety twelve inches below. At occasional places, carefully shadowed, they kept chinks covered by stones, which, when the sun sank to the proper angle, or at dawn, could be uncovered to make a peephole large enough for a man’s eye.