So history repeats itself. Ten years ago--to the month--the Japanese lay without Port Arthur as they do to-day. Instead of Russians, Chinese were inside. But as the Japanese advanced along the western wall they suddenly at a bend in the way came upon ten bodies--no more--of their own comrades, stripped and mutilated, the heads grinning from pikes above. The Chinese had visited their own vengeance on successful enemies. But the act lost them Port Arthur. The Japanese became an army of fanatics, a tribe of solemn, righteous men, inflamed with the zeal of retribution, blazing with revenge, as did once that ancient civilization founded on the prophetic watchword, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” The next day Port Arthur fell. Those ten bodies cost the Chinese a province, a fortune and an island kingdom. How will the Russians pay? I asked this of a certain Lieutenant-General, who told me some of the details I have just related. He raised his arm and pointed beyond the bombproof in which we sat to where the western harbor, with its magnificent Russian stone dwellings rising beyond could be plainly seen. “We have a proverb in our country,” said he, “like this, ‘Once won, well won; twice won, never lost.’” Chapter Thirteen FROM KITTEN TO TIGER Headquarters, Third Imperial Army, Before Port Arthur, Sept. 30th:--We went yesterday to the foremost firing line, where all the venom of war is concentrated in a score of yards among a dozen men. There we saw how the besiegers of Port Arthur are besieging it, how they live, what manner of men they are, and some of the facts of modern warfare which those who want to know about the humanity of science had better not read. Before we went an officer led us to a bombproof on the Japanese side of the great valley across which we were to go to gain the captured fort. “Look!” said he, turning over his hyposcope, “the way is about a mile and a half. The real danger is in the fort itself, but if you are very careful to crawl with your heads low you are safe. If you decide to go you must relieve our authorities from all responsibility for your lives.” Across the valley a puff of white spat out a tongue of flame; a shell crashed into the escarpment below us. From across the valley came the intermittent puffing of outposts. A mis-shot bullet lapped up a patch of dust twenty paces to our right. “Well, gentlemen, will you go? It’s a quiet morning. We had better start soon if at all, for the sun is in their eyes now; soon it will be against us and then they can pick us off like flies.”