What strategy was this which held a big, fat, pompous army inactive through a golden month of campaigning like this June? Bingley exclaimed that Kuroki was so inflated by the Yalu victory that he was content to hunt butterflies for the rest of the summer. The rumble of real war reached the writers from time to time. Apparently, the other Japanese generals were not like this gray-haired Fabius--Kuroki of the first army. A man named Oku, it was reported, had landed a second army at Pitsewo, half-way down the east coast of Liaotung, had bored straightway across some devilishly steep passes and cut off the fortress, Port Arthur, from the mainland. The story of this fight was insufferable poison to the white men with Kuroki. It had taken place on a narrow neck of land, where sits high the town of Kinchow, joining the little peninsula of the fortress to the big Liao peninsula above. The rock-collared neck of land is memorable now by a hill called Nanshan--the battle’s name. Oku burned five thousand dead after the fight, but he had cut off Port Arthur for the siege, and made possible the landing of one Nogi with a third Japanese army at Dalny--cheap at twice the price. Japanese gunboats and torpedoes at sea on the west had helped Oku get the strangle-hold on the neck of land, while a Russian fleet had bombarded from the bay on the east. What torture to believe this--that at last in the history of the world armies and navies had met in a single action! It was almost unthinkable to be camping with Kuroki in the ancient Chinese hills, while such a panorama unfolded for the eyes of other men--a battle such as the gods would put on flesh to witness. Finally the word was brought in by the Chinese, who knew all things, that this jumping-bean, Oku, had left the fortress to Nogi and the third army, and leaped north to join a fourth army, under Nodzu, who had effected a perfect landing at Takushan. Oku whipped poor Stackelberg on the journey, Telissu being the historic title of this incident of his flying march. Thus Yalu, Nanshan, and Telissu were fought without even a smell of smoke for Bingley, Feeney, Finacune, Trollope, and others. It is to be noted that even Trollope blanched at the great war story the world missed by not letting him in on Nanshan. That was one battle for a Tolstoi. The English civilians sat together on a breezy, sweet-scented hill and watched the sun go down on one of those June evenings. Feeney was writing, the pad resting upon his knee. “What did you say was the name of your new book?” Finacune inquired. “‘Sitting Tight with Kuroki; or, The Wild Flowers of Manchuria,’” grumbled the old man.