'At 7 a.m. the enemy began to shell intermittently Fortification No. 3 and Erh-lung-shan Fort, and their miners continued working. At 9 a.m. the noise of work in the mining galleries suddenly ceased, and two charges were exploded in the salient angles of the fort. At the moment of the explosion there was only the gun crew on duty in the casemate; the rest of the men were in their quarters in the gorge. Great blocks of the inner skin of armoured concrete were torn off by the force of the explosion and piled up in the exit, crushing several men. On the parapet, to left and right of the shelter, were two huge craters. To relieve the position to some extent, and to check the enemy's assaulting columns, our batteries were ordered to fire on the approaches in front of the fort; but what good could our fire do when in the Zaredoubt Battery there was only one serviceable 6-inch gun, on Laperoff Hill also only one 6-inch and a 40-millimetre battery, on Mitrofanieff's hill one 40-millimetre battery, and on Tumulus Hill four quick-firing field-guns? All these batteries, though under a heavy shell-fire, did what they could. 'About 11 a.m. the first message from Captain Bulgakoff, commanding the fort, was received by the staff of the section, reporting that the enemy had destroyed the parapet by the great explosion, and had seized it, that our men were panic-struck and were holding the retrenchment with great difficulty. Gorbatovsky then sent up a company at once from the reserves to relieve Bulgakoff, and to drive the Japanese out of the fort. However, despite this reinforcement, the garrison not only failed to hurl back the enemy, but lost the retrenchment. The officers tried to lead a counter-attack, but when, on going out from the retrenchment, the first men were killed, the remainder refused to go on, and bolted from the retrenchment into the quarters in the gorge. Taking advantage of the darkness, small parties of the enemy got round the flanks, threatening to surround the fort from the rear, to seize the gorge ditch, and cut off communication with the Fortress. The enemy's artillery continued firing all day. The communicating roads to the fort were destroyed, but were being repaired all the time by our sappers, especially at night. The abandonment of the fort was begun in the afternoon and finished about two in the morning. On leaving the fort Captain Bulgakoff gave orders to pour kerosene over the bed-boards and set light to the men's quarters and light the long fuses of the mines. At 2 a.m. Gorbatovsky ordered me to go to Fock in the morning and give him my opinion as to the necessity of holding Fortification No. 3 to the end.' The general opinion of the officers in Arthur was that the loss of Erh-lung-shan Fort was due principally to the bad _moral_ of the garrison, caused by the General's demoralizing influence and the example he had set by Fort Chi-kuan-shan.