Nogi's army swept into the ranks of the opposing Russians, shouting, "Out of the way for us; we're from Port Arthur". To them fighting in the open country face to face with the enemy was as child's play compared with the horrors they had faced in scaling the bristling mountainsides north of Port Arthur. There they advanced against hidden terrors that lurked behind dull gray walls of huge forts; they braved the cunningly devised high priests of death that are hidden underground and work havoc and disaster when victory seems within grasp. They had looked death in the face in a hundred hidden forms unflinchingly, had fought and conquered a foe behind vast walls. Here there was only man to man. Shells burst overhead, scattering deadly shrapnel, but what was that to the rain of ponderous steel from siege guns that tore out the face of hillsides and annihilated regiments at a single puff. These were the men who, with a strident battle cry of scorn for the ease of the task, swept through thirty miles in a single day, trampling Russian regiments under foot, storming over fortified towns as though no men or guns were there, right up to the gates of Mukden, right where their guns could search the huddled ranks of Russians, fleeing from the destructible force that was welding a ring around them. Nature finally checked them. Up from the Manchurian plains a mighty wind swept a blinding simoon that halted their irresistible host at the moment when they were driving home the last fatal blow. For a day the whole battlefield was wrapped in a blinding curtain of sweeping sand. When once again Nogi's men could take up the work they had begun the bulk of the Russian force had fled past. Undaunted they swept northward, and four days later, when the beaten and dispersed army was reorganizing its ranks from the chaos of the flight, it was Nogi's men, springing once more out of the west, that set Kuropatkin's whole remnant in flight again, leaving behind them the last fortified position in Southern Manchuria. Oyama planned, but the palm for the victories of Mukden and the further flight from Tie Pass belongs to Nogi and the host that took Port Arthur. [Sidenote: Master Stroke of the Battle]