[Illustration: ON THE DECK OF THE "RURIK."] [Sidenote: The Port Arthur Garrison] The fall of Port Arthur, which the Japanese, in the pardonable confidence begotten of their uninterrupted victories on sea and land, had believed to be imminent long ago, now became the object of renewed and desperate endeavor. Dalny Harbor had been cleared of mines, and rendered available for the landing of siege trains; and no sooner had the ill-fated sortie of the fleet been frustrated, than the Japanese settled down again to a fierce assault. As a preliminary, on the 16th of August a message was sent to General Stoessel under a flag of truce demanding the surrender of the fortress, and proposing that, in case of non-compliance, the non-combatants should be allowed to leave. To the former of these proposals, General Stoessel, as might have been expected of so brave and resolute a soldier, returned an emphatic and indignant negative; and the second, with much less reason, he equally refused to entertain. Just at this moment all good Russians had been gladdened, even in the midst of their disasters, by the long-hoped-for birth of an heir to the Imperial Throne, and General Stoessel was able to send a congratulatory message to the Czar, while receiving in his turn an order appointing him, as a mark of special Imperial favor, an aide-de-camp general. The determination of the Russian garrison had never abated for a moment; and such assurances that the eyes and hopes of all Russia were centred on them, stirred them to the heroic pitch of endurance. Shut off from the outer world both by sea and land, with provisions and ammunition daily becoming more scanty, and beneath the harassment of an incessant bombardment and fierce and desperate assaults, they held grimly on to the defences, and defied the worst that the enemy could do, in spite of his overwhelming numbers. The progress of the siege could not be followed easily by the external spectator, because the Japanese strictly kept their own counsel; while the reports that were brought to Chifu from time to time by Chinese refugees were conflicting and contradictory in the last degree. One thing only was undeniably evident--that the Japanese assaults on different sections of the main line of defence had been made with desperate valor and indifference to loss of life; and that, except in unimportant instances, these assaults had not prevailed. Forts were indeed captured, but had to be abandoned again, because they were exposed to the fire of neighboring forts. Not in vain had the Russian engineers exercised their best brains in devising the defences of this "impregnable fortress". Mines, wire entanglements, and every other grim expedient for checking assault had been constructed with patient ingenuity; and, most deadly and cunning device of all, every fort in the long chain that shuts in Port Arthur on the land side had been so placed as to be dominated by the neighboring forts; so that no enemy