The Japanese hope lives high above the loss of companies. It was a glad morning for the Island Empire men, a bright task they were given to do. Other companies, full quota, were shot forward to tread upon the dead and beat themselves to death against the entrenchment. A third torrent was rolled against the Russians before the second had suffered a complete blood-letting.... Routledge saw one five-foot demon wielding his rifle-butt upon the rim of the trench, in the midst of gray Russian giants. For an instant he was a human tornado, filled with the idea to kill--that Brownie--then he was sucked down and stilled. Routledge wondered if they completely wiped out the little man’s smile at the last. He was ill from the butchery, and his mind was prone to grope away from the bleeding heart of things; still, he missed little of the great tragedy which unfolded in the smoke. And always Oku, unparalleled profligate of men, coiled up his companies and sprung them against a position which Napoleon would have called impregnable--Oku, whose voice was quiet as a mystic’s prayer. The thought came to Routledge that the women of America would tear down the capitol at Washington with their hands, if the walls contained a monster who had spent the blood of their sons and lovers as Oku was doing now. A new tumult in the air! It was like an instant horrid crash of drums in the midst of a violin solo. Artillery now roared down upon Oyama’s left wing.... The wildest dream of hell was on. Routledge, crawling westward through the pit of fire, saw a platoon of infantry smashed as a cue-ball shatters a fifteen block in pool.... Westward under the Russian guns, he crawled through the sun-shot, smoke-charged shambles, miraculously continuing alive in that thick, steady, annihilating blizzard of steel--his brain desperate with the rush of images and the shock of sounds. Over a blood-wet turf he crawled, among the quivering parts of men....