Now it was the turn of the Russian guns to bark. From all along their lines in the dusk of dawn resounded the din of artillery. The open, when the advance had begun, instantly grew lividly aflame with bursting shrapnel. It seemed that nothing could live under that awful baptism of steel. Then the din subsided before the Japanese, glasses glued to their eyes, could catch telltale feathers of smoke that even the smokeless powder sends out from big guns. The echoes of the guns are still reverberating far away among the foothills, when up from the ground again spring those lithe, invincible shadows that speed once more ten yards or more and then vanish as they hug the earth. Where there were five, three have survived; here and there a single one gets up to continue the advance where a group had been. But from behind others are making these short dashes, too. The plain finally is fairly alive with troops, dashing forward, taking cover, dashing forward again. Five hundred yards away when they started, their numbers are already thinning when the first hundred yards has been crossed. Others fill the gaps and two hundred yards are crossed, and in the growing light it can be seen that strewn all along the line of the advance are forms that lie stark and still when the living spring to action for those unhalting sprints. Now Russian riflemen are heard from. Rifles crackle from every side, and then death begins high carnival. But the advance goes on. No rising now and speeding those few yards. The Japanese are crawling. The living use the bodies of the dead for protection. Often pushing these before them they cover yard by yard, the zone of death. Now only a hundred yards divides them from the outermost huts of the village. Hotter and hotter becomes the fire of the defenders. In a moment the assault has begun. A hundred, two hundred, are on their feet. Bullets eat holes in their ranks, but only the dead falter. Presently, with the ring of steel on steel, the ranks close. The rifle fire is fitful in the disorder of hand-to-hand fighting. Then up from all parts of the open rise scores of Japanese. They sweep into the midst of the fray, whole companies still coming press the fight. Back through the village from house to house, from wall to wall, goes on the hand-to-hand, man to man duel. Never once did the Japanese fail in the early days of the struggle to drive back the Russian defenders, for when one such attack failed there were countless others eager to begin again the same tactics. [Sidenote: Russian Artillery Impotent]