These several successes, comparatively unimportant though they were, coupled with the practical destruction of the Port Arthur and Vladivostock fleets, put new heart into the Japanese for a time; but with the arrival and passage of the month of September, during which no appreciable progress was made in the operations before Port Arthur, even the unexampled patience and superb stoicism thus far displayed by the Japanese as a people showed signs of the wear and tear to which they had so long been subjected, and murmurings at General Nogi's apparent non-success began to make themselves heard. The casualty lists seemed to grow ever longer with the passage of the days, without any visible result, except that Nogi contrived to retain possession of the few unimportant positions which he had gained, and a black cloud of pessimism seemed to be settling down upon the Island Empire. Meanwhile, however, in its silent, secret, undemonstrative way, the Japanese army had been making preparations of an important character, among which were included the construction of concrete emplacements for eighteen 11-inch howitzers, from which great things were expected. They fired a 500-pound projectile charged with high explosive, and had a range which enabled them to command the entire area of the fortress, including the harbour. On the 1st October the first six of these howitzers opened fire, in the presence of General Baron Kodama, who had crossed to Port Arthur from Japan to administer, perhaps, a fillip to the officers and the army generally. North Kikwan fort was the first recipient of the new guns' delicate attentions, one hundred shells being poured into it. Huge clouds of dust and smoke at once arose from the fort; but it was enormously strong, and no very important results were apparent. On the following day and for a few days afterwards the howitzers lobbed shells upon the fleet, and the _Pobieda, Poltava, Retvisan_, and _Peresviet_ were all struck, and their crews driven out of them, after which they were moved to the East harbour, where they were hidden from the sight of our gunners by the intervening high ground. Meanwhile the Japanese engineers were resolutely and industriously pushing their saps ever closer up to the Russian forts, in the progress of which task the most furious and sanguinary hand-to-hand fighting with bayonet and bomb was of daily, nay hourly, occurrence. The slaughter was appalling, few of the combatants on either side surviving such encounters.