Next morning, from 2 to 5 a.m., we heard heavy musketry fire from the direction of Ta-ku-shan: the enemy, leaving the town and the main defences in peace, were turning their attention to it. This hill corresponded in the east to 203 Metre Hill in the west, and was equally important and equally unfortified. It and Sia-gu-shan, the natural forts of Arthur on the eastern front, had a bad time. In the first place, they had not been made the most of, for in the original plan of defence of Port Arthur they had not been thought to be important points, and so had been neither fortified nor armed as their position with regard to the Fortress warranted, and Smirnoff had only recently succeeded in arming them to a small extent. In the second place, they became, after the abandonment of Wolf's Hills, open to flanking fire, and therefore untenable. The companies of the 13th East Siberian Rifle Regiment sent there went literally to their death, but, together with the gunners, they held on as long as possible. As Ta-ku-shan was not a fort or even a semi-permanent work, but only an artillery position, without casemates or splinter-proofs in which the defenders could get protection during the artillery preparation, it can be easily imagined what the place was like when the enemy turned on to it the fire of both big and small guns. At eight in the evening the last small force on the right flank retired behind the main line of works after a desperate fight. The Japanese attacked fiercely in dense masses, and also pounded the whole of the eastern front, as well as some of the shore batteries. When they at length did succeed in getting possession of Ta-ku-shan and Sia-gu-shan, after heavy loss, we in our turn concentrated such a heavy gun-fire on those hills that they were unable to effect their object of building batteries. Later in the evening I climbed up on to Golden Hill Battery to see what was to be seen. During supper a telephone message was received instructing us to open fire at once on Ta-ku-shan, firing at intervals of five minutes. Captain Zeitz, who was in command, immediately set to work at the chart and got out the range. Above, men began moving about the guns, while we remained below, sitting in the concrete casemate, which, in spite of its solidity, had been penetrated by a 12-inch shell during the sea bombardment. When after five minutes the battery opened fire with its 11-inch monsters the lamps in the casemate were at once extinguished, and several of the table utensils were smashed by the blast through the open hatch. Hatches and doors were then shut, but to little purpose, for almost every discharge put out the lights and the noise was deafening. I went up on to the battery, and found it quite dark, though the howitzers, their muzzles cocked up, showed clearly against the white masonry. The howitzer crews were moving about with lanterns.