“Hell!” he snapped viciously. “Those trenches are abandoned. Kuropatkin might as well be cooling his toes in Lake Baikal for all Nodzu will find there, and he’s rushing as if----” At this instant the Russian works were rubbed out of vision in a burst of white smoke, and the sound of Russian bullets was like the swooping of ten thousand night-hawks.... A terrific crash, a blast of dust, burnt powder, filings, sickening gases--and that which a moment ago was a dashing young captain with upraised sword was now wet rags and dripping fragments of pulp. “Shrapnel,” said Bingley. “He’s happy now. He was playing to a gallery of Samurai saints--that little officer.... Nervy devils all--never doubt it.... But we’re walloped--walloped sure as hell. We can never take those works.” The position of the enemy was now obscured by trembling terraces of white smoke, out of which poured countless streams of death, literally spraying Nodzu’s command, as firemen play their torrents upon a burning building. A rat couldn’t have lived out a full minute in the base of that valley. The Japanese left a terrible tribute, but the few sped on and upward to the first line of Russian entrenchments. A peculiar memory recurred to Bingley. Once in London he had seen a runaway team of huge grays attached to a loaded coal-cart. The tailboard of the cart jarred loose, and the contents streamed out behind as the horses ran. So the hard-hit streamed out from the Japanese charge as it passed over the base of the valley. Even as the maddest of the Japanese survivors were about to flood over the first embankment, it was fringed with bayonets as a wall with broken glass; and along the length of the next higher trenches shot a ragged ring of smoke--clots of white strung like pearls.... As a train boring into a mountain is stopped, so was Nodzu’s brown swarm halted, lifted, and hurled back. “The little brown dogs!” observed Bingley with joyful amazement. “Why, they’d keep the British army busy!... And they smile, dam’ ’em--they smile!” This last referred to the dead and wounded which the hospital corps was now bringing back.... From out of the welter, a new charge formed and failed. Again--even Bingley was shaken by the slaughter and his organs stuck together--Nodzu hurled a third torrent of the Samurai up that unconquerable roll of earth. It curled like a feather in a flame, diminished, and faltered back.... The day was ending--Bingley’s gorgeous, memorable day. He had travelled twenty-five miles on foot; he had caught up with the Japanese army after five months in the field; he had seen Nodzu charge and Zurubaieff hold; he had seen the wounded who would not cry, and the dead who would not frown.