Silence. Oku stopped to breathe and pick up the fragments.... From far up on the Russian works--it was like the celestial singing in the ears of the dying--began a distant, thrilling music. Some regiment or brigade, swinging into the intrenchments to relieve a weary command, had burst into song.... Once before Routledge had caught a touch of this enchantment, during the Boxer Rebellion. He had never been able to forget Jerry Cardinegh’s telling of the Russian battle-hymns at Plevna.... Great emotions bowed him now. Another terrace of defense caught up the song, and the winds that cleared the reeking valley of smoke carried along the vibrant inspiration. Every Russian heart gripped the grand contagion. From terrace to terrace, from trench to trench, from pit to emplacement, that glorious thunder stalked, a company, a battery, a brigade, at a stride. Each voice was a raw, dust-bitten shout--the whole a majestic harmony, from the cannon-meat of Liaoyang! Sons of the North, gray, sodden, sorrow-stunted men of pent misery and unlit souls--Finlander, Siberian, Caspian, Caucasian--hurling forth their heart-hunger in a tumult of song that shook the continent. The spirit of All the Russias giving tongue--the tragedy of Poland, the clank of chains, the mockery of palaces, the iron pressure of frost, the wail of the wolf-pack on frozen tundras, the cry of the crushed, the blind groping of the human to God--it was all in that rhythmic roar, all the dreadful annals of a decadent people. As it was born, so it died,--that music,--from terrace to terrace, the last wavering chant from out the city walls. The little Japanese made no answer. Routledge could not help but see the mark of the beast in contrast. It wasn’t the Russians that bothered Oku, but the Russian position. Kuroki would pull them out of that.... Song or steel, they would take Liaoyang. They prepared to charge again. * * * * * In the disorder of the next charge Routledge crossed the railroad and passed out of the Japanese lines. Late afternoon, as he hurried westward for his horses, he met the eyes of Bingley. He was not given a chance to pass another way. The race for the cable was on. TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER ROUTLEDGE ENCOUNTERS THE “HORSE-KILLER” ON THE FIELD OF LIAOYANG, AND THEY RACE FOR THE UNCENSORED CABLE AT SHANHAIKWAN