He glanced at his watch, at last, and at his field outfit, which was all packed and in order. Then he slept until dawn. No one slept after that, since Nodzu was up with the first light, like a boy with a new cannon on the morning of the Fourth. Bingley was missed at breakfast. His Korean coolies knew nothing, except that they had been ordered to take care of the Bingley property and wait for orders. The “Horse-killer” had made a clean departure with a good mount and nothing but his saddle-bags. Still, no one fathomed his audacity. Confidently, it was expected that he would be returned in short order by some of the Japanese commanders who happened to read the civilian insignia flaring upon his sleeve. As a matter of fact, Bingley quickly would have been overhauled had he not brooded so long and so well upon the time. The middle Japanese army was too busy that morning to think of one daring civilian. Bingley’s plan was this: To watch what he could of the battle, unfettered, making his way gradually westward behind Oku until the end, or until such time as he mastered the color and saw the end; then to ride alone down the railroad, nearly to Fengmarong; there to leave his horse, cross the Liao River, and travel on foot down to Wangcheng. He planned to catch the Chinese Eastern at Wangcheng and make the day’s journey to Shanhaikwan beyond the Wall, where the Japanese could not censor his message. In a word, Bingley’s plan was to stake all on reaching a free cable before any other man, and to put on that cable the first and greatest story of the greatest battle of the war. That was a day in which Bingley truly lived. A mile behind Nodzu’s reserve, he spurred his horse down into a tight darkened ravine, and tethered the beast long to crop the pale grass blades thinly scattered throughout the sunless crevasse. Marking well the topography of the place, so that he could find it again in anything but darkness, Bingley moved back toward the valleys of action. Nodzu was hammering the impregnable Russian position before the city from the hills, and charging down at intervals great masses of infantry to hold the main Russian force in their intrenchments before the city, and thus to prevent the Russian general from sending back a large enough portion of his army to crush or outflank the Japanese flanker.