The Opposing Armies in Manchuria--The Russian Advance--Reinforcements for Both Sides--Battle of the Sha-ho--Two Hundred Hours of Carnage--Awful List of Casualties--Threat and Counterthreat--The Veil Lifted from Port Arthur--Capture of Forts--Devices of the Besiegers--The Undaunted Stoessel--The Gallant Podgorsky--World-Wide Admiration--Uncertain News. [Sidenote: The Opposing Armies in Manchuria] The great battle of Liao-yang was fought in the last week of August and the first week of September; and for nearly five weeks after that tremendous struggle the opposing armies remained inactive, or rather gathered up their exhausted strength for the next desperate encounter. The Japanese had advanced as far as Yentai, a station about one-third of the distance--40 miles or so--that separates Liao-yang from Mukden. The position was valuable as giving the command of the Yentai coal mines--a most important acquisition to any general with a long line of railway communication to maintain. The Japanese entrenched themselves along a front of some 25 miles, stretching from Yentai on the railway to Pensihu, a village in the hilly country which lies north and south between the two rivers Taitse and Hun. There they settled down to replenishing the exhausted supplies, refilling the depleted ranks, and reorganizing the dislocated commands. Above all did they make speed to reconstruct the railway behind them, a work which had diligently been carried on _pari passu_ with the advance. Early in October through trains of the new 3 ft. 6 in. gauge were running from Dalny to Yentai, and thus the fighting-line was brought within an easy six days' journey of Japan. The Russians, on the other hand, in spite of the completion of the Circum-Baikal railway towards the end of September, were still from three to five times as distant from their prime base; for if the express time from Mukden to Moscow was sixteen days, the ordinary troop train's time was much nearer thirty days. In this all-important matter of rapidity of communication the Japanese possessed an advantage inherent to the situation and of the profoundest strategical influence. While they were recuperating thus at Yentai, the Russians were busy entrenching themselves behind the Hun-ho, the course of which from Mukden follows a line, roughly speaking, due east. At first it was asserted by those in the confidence of the Russian General Staff, that no determined stand would be made at the Hun-ho, and that Kuropatkin would only hold the enemy there until the defences at Tieling were completed. But as the days passed, and the Japanese showed no disposition to renew their advance, and as reinforcements continued to pour over the Siberian railway, counsels were modified. In the last week of September General Stackelberg, attending a banquet at Mukden, proposed the toast "To the March on Liao-yang"; and this startling suggestion of a new development in the Russian plan of campaign was