comparatively little damage to an advancing force. It was resolved to try this plan. [Illustration: RUSSIANS CHARGING JAPANESE TRENCHES AT PORT ARTHUR.] [Sidenote: Rushing the Trenches] Once again, then, the bugles rang out for attack, and the Japanese threw themselves with desperate bravery upon the Russian entrenchments. The wire entanglements gave as much difficulty as ever, and the slopes of the hill were one blinding sheet of flame; but still the Japanese pressed forward, climbing over their own dead and working their way gradually through the obstacles placed in their path. By a piece of good fortune the electric wires connected with a large mine field were discovered just in time and cut, and thus a dreadful disaster was averted. But brilliant as was the dash of the 1st and 3rd Divisions on the Russian right, the defence of the Czar's troops was stubborn and hardly contested, and it was not till the 4th Division on the extreme left had carried through their flanking operation that the issue of the day was put beyond doubt. Here the gunboats in the bay rendered invaluable service. They steamed close in and poured in a heavy fire upon the Russian batteries, covering the advance of the infantry through the shallows. In this gallant operation the commander of the _Chiokai_, Captain Hayashi, was killed, and several other casualties were sustained by the crews engaged. But the work was accomplished. Climbing the hill like cats, the Japanese soldiery broke through the entanglements in face of a galling fire and rushed the trenches, bayonetting the defenders where they stood. Nothing could stop that mad onslaught, and after a fierce hand-to-hand conflict on the summit the flag of the Rising Sun floated triumphantly over the position which the Russians had so fondly, and indeed so naturally, deemed to be impregnable. [Sidenote: The Russians in Flight] General Stoessel, finding that there was no use in continuing the sanguinary conflict now that his flank was turned, ordered a general retreat. The Japanese, however, in spite of the tremendous fatigues to which they had already been subjected since dawn, fiercely pursued their retiring enemy, with the result that the Russians found it impossible to make a stand at their second line of defence at Nankuenling, and were compelled to flee as far as the immediate neighborhood of Port Arthur itself. [Sidenote: Tremendous Moral Effect]