What Blaine’s unfortunate “three R’s” were to his Presidential campaign “203-Meter Hill” was to the siege of Port Arthur. Risen to the dignity of key to the situation, it had, in an ordnance sense, little to do with the case. It was but one of seven advance posts for final assault. A pimple of progress to the engineer, it was not permanently fortified, did not belong to the primary scheme of defense, and was dominated by three of the finest forts—Etzeshan, Anzushan, and Liaotishan: mountains of the Chair, the Table, and the Lion’s Mane. For three reasons heavy guns could not be mounted there. First, the cost in energy and life would be too vast, because rifles whose barrels alone weigh from two to eight tons each would have to be hauled by hand up 680 feet of rock, a task heroic even in peace. In war, wedged among three magnificently intrenched hostile positions, this would be impossible. Second, even if these heavy guns—only of any value against forts or fleets—had been gotten there, they would have been pounded to pieces within an hour of arrival by the more numerous and better emplaced artillery of the Chair, the Table, and the Lion’s Mane. Finally, heavy guns are never emplaced on mountain peaks in an offensive campaign.

“203” had one value—a great one. It was the best point of observation the Japanese had yet had. Line of vision, not line of fire, was what they needed. From “203” they could look into all portions of the harbor that could float a warship, but, what was more essential, they could look around the promontory of Golden Hill into the cove, where the hunted remnant of the Russian fleet had been hiding, at loose anchor, since the disastrous attempt to escape on August 10th. They had no need for better artillery posts than the positions which they had held for four months and from which they had been able to place shells in any spot on the Russian side.

“Any spot,” that is, if they knew where the spot was. To locate the spot had been the difficulty. “203” gave the line of vision, but it was so wedged in among commanding batteries that its value depended upon an instrument new to warfare—the hyposcope. This is merely a telescope cut in half—the front half elevated above the other, like the head of an ostrich above the body, and the two connected by a further length of scope. In the joints thus formed mirrors are placed. Thus a view of the interior of Port Arthur was brought over the topmost trench of “203” to the eyes and brain of the Japanese lookout, protected there by the rocks. Through the hyposcope a lookout could observe the effect of every shot from his own batteries, located not on “203” or anywhere near “203,” but distant, most of them, two or three miles. While he operated the hyposcope with his left hand, with his right he held to his ear the receiver of a telephone connected directly with each of these firing batteries. These batteries were emplaced, not on mountain peaks, not on the front of the mountain range from which their operations were being directed, but entirely behind this range, which was parallel to the coast range, forming the permanent line of Russian defense. From these points, scattered in the rear of the Japanese position, distant from the Russians, the nearest half a mile, the farthest three miles, the work of the bombardment went on. The firing was what the military man calls “high angle” or “plunging”; that is, the shell traveled in the line of a parabola over two mountain ranges, which separated the Japanese batteries from the Russian ships. The gunners never had a sight of what they were firing at, the officers in command of the batteries never had a sight of what they were firing at. Only the lookout on “203” knew where the shells went, and he got his knowledge through a mirror. This knowledge was used by the artillery officer, who found the range by means of a quadrant. The hyposcope, the telephone, the quadrant—these were the scientific ganglia that wiped the mountains from the map of the Liaotung Peninsula, and brought the operations, in the mind’s eye, to the level of a billiard table. “203” was the cushion needed for successful caroming. It would be useless to lug heavy guns up there; the hyposcope was carried up, but not artillery.

Dispatches have said that the capture of “203” gave the besiegers command of the town. Such dispatches concerning other captured positions were published repeatedly. Their effect was to keep the world continuously expecting the fall of Port Arthur. Let it once be comprehended that none of the positions captured up to December 15th was permanent, that none was a part of the grand scheme of defense perfected by the Russians through the past seven years; that there still remained seventeen primary and twenty-five secondary positions on the land side in addition to the finest forts which are on the sea side, and it will be apparent that this expectation was not, until General Stoessel decided that further resistance was useless, justified by the actual conditions.

Commanding the town meant little. The Japanese navy put shells into the town on the 8th of February, and had been able to put them in ever since; the army put them in on the 11th of August, and had been qualified for destruction ever since. They wanted to save the town. They looked upon it as their property. Why smash up what they would have to rebuild? The fleet had been their chief objective. Though inert for four months, it was a menace until sunk; that out of the way, they need not worry. Of course their shells had searched about for arsenals and storehouses; if the town got in the way of the search—well, so much the worse for the town, but the Japanese effort had been to save their own. It was not Port Arthur, but Stoessel and his forts, that Nogi was after, just as it was not Richmond, but Lee and his army, that Grant was after.

As for the strategic position, no one can say that any one fort at Port Arthur is the key. Nature assisted expert engineers in devising those forts. All are so arranged that each is commanded by two or three, and, in some cases, by a dozen others; thus when one was taken it drew Russian fire from its fellows until it became untenable. Such was the situation at “203-Meter Hill.” The Japanese had driven the Russians out, but they were unable to mount guns of large caliber there, or do aught but locate a farther station from which to direct final assaults. Ten years ago, when the Japanese took Port Arthur from the Chinese in a day, one fort, Etzeshan, taken, the others fell. That was the key. To-day no single fort is so important. “203” is dominated by the Table fort, the Table fort by the Chair fort, the Chair fort by Golden Hill, and Golden Hill by the Lion’s Mane. And after all this was taken, there would still remain the east forts. Yet, the capture of “203” was decisive. On September 19th, the Japanese lost two thousand men in trying to take it. The attempt failed. The division with the job in hand sat down, waited, and worked. Two months and a half of sapping, and one day of assault, on December 4th, turned the trick. Though it did not mean the fall of Port Arthur, it meant the beginning of the end. This for the reason that every contraction in the Russian line meant a gain in Japanese strength. The smaller the circumference the less the capacity for resistance. And, after all, the physical fact of the fall was simply a question of mathematics. The loss of life appalls, the spectacle attracts, the glory inthralls, but the intellect, backed by whatever impulse it is that gives man resolution for the supreme sacrifice, commands. A chessboard and two master minds—such was Port Arthur, Nogi, and Stoessel. The checking move was made as long ago as May 26th, when the battle of Nanshan was fought. The fate of Port Arthur was sealed then just as it was sealed again when “203” was taken.

Let us look at that September assault on “203,” of which the one in December was but a repetition, and glimpse what it meant to storm Port Arthur. Could all the bloody story of the siege be told, “203” would be forgotten, a detail lost in vista, swamped in gigantic operations, veiled in the mist of vast sacrifices. Yet the mind, puny as it is, must grasp an incident and cling tight, as a poet to the fringe of metaphor, for comprehension even distant.

Passing from the rear of the army to the front, you might realize something of the tricky skill used to move those pawns over that vast chessboard. To the eye of an eagle all would have been invisible. The sum of his sight would have been a tongue of land making faces at the sea, ridged with deep blotches from whose recesses thin pricks of smoke slipped to the crack and roar of great guns.

Yet lively work was seen. Close to the right rear was the first battery, a six-gun emplacement of field four point sevens. At one o’clock in the afternoon the telephone rang, the lieutenant in command called, and instantly the redoubt swarmed with figures that sprang like ants from the earth. Busy as ants, they answered the order from brigade headquarters for the signal shot to open the grand bombardment. They had come from their bomb-proofs, into which they would dodge again as soon as the shot was fired. There was much pride in the chief gunner as he took a cartridge from its bomb-proof shell chest, ran to his gun, threw open the cordite chamber, pulled out the breech block, rammed in the shell, snapped the block, and stepped back to signal the lanyard man; more pride than is usual in the Japanese gunner, a timid, simple being, dexterously handling his delicate instrument with as little vanity as he would handle a potato hoe.

Hurrying on the road to escape the shock, and looking back, the battery was invisible. The bewilderment of the eagle, if told that danger lurked there, would be overwhelming. A shell spat out, revealing the battery behind a mass of earth forming a natural redoubt. This was in a narrow valley with only a small range of foothills between it and the sea, a place later called “The Valley of the Shadow of Death.” Behind every mountain shoulder, and up every gorge, firing high angle over the eminence in front, was a battery nestled in its redoubt, with bomb-proofs for the men and bomb-proofs for the ammunition. It was hardly a valley, but a ravine, barren of grass, a torrential place through which, in spring, huge rains tore. Soon other rain—red rain, powdery and leaden—was to pour there.

Directly in front, out of the west, loomed “203,” flanked by its gigantic brothers, granite-tossed, the Chair and the Table and the Lion’s Mane. Bone of the world’s vertebrÆ, Russia had capped them with science and determination. Their cordoned batteries, cunning and intricate, spoke not a word in reply to the Japanese taunts hurled in upon them, savage and vain. Why reply? They knew their strength. Before “203” lay a height down on the map, like the disputed key itself, under figures to denote in meters its reach skyward; “176” they call it, lacking more intimate speech, but the soldiers quickly dubbed the hill “Namicoyama,” for they saw its resemblance to a flying fish abundant in these waters, called by us the trepang, by Japanese the namico. The mongers of Kamikura, after disemboweling, inflate this fish for hanging lamps. There it lay—the namico—its slopes spread finwise, its two peaks, furze-capped, rising above the mists of the valley as incandescents struggle through the fog of the night. Ringed with barbed wire was each peak and close about the top were lines of loopholed rock. As the following step of a stair, “203” rose beyond, fortified likewise. From the nearer peak the tardy glint of the sun caught the brass muzzles of two cannon. From the farther, down the slope, ran a trench continued to the sea.

The battle was on. Before the Russian outlook knew it the Japanese advance was at the base of Namicoyama. Each man was stripped to his khaki uniform, his cartridge belt and his rifle. Four hundred rounds of ammunition were in the four leather boxes at his belt, and in his hip pocket was a ration, dubbed with a soldier laugh, “iron”—three hard biscuits with a piece of salt fish the size of his palm.

Up they went cautiously, a squad of twenty at a time, slinking along the ravines, their rifle-butts dragging the ground; one file of twenty, then another and another, until the slopes were dotted with figures colored like the earth—silent, nimble, tiny.

Now the artillery was at it heavily. Beginning with the battery we had seen go into action, the pieces spoke up, one by one, until near a hundred guns were spitting fire from the nooks behind; astonishing to an eagle, but the Russians seemed not to mind. The shots increased, the din augmented. A shell appeals to the imagination—snarls like a wild beast, flings fierce shrieks into unwilling ears, rends tooth and claw at fear. The place might have been a nest of demons with the old devil hen hatching them out. The Japanese kept those two ridges so hot with shrapnel that not a man dared show himself. For twenty yards below the parapet the slope bubbled as does a pot boiling above the kettle’s brim. Not a sound from the nearer Russians. From Anzushan, from Etzeshan, from “203,” and even from far-off Liaotishan the replies spoke distant and absurd, but Namicoyama, slated for assault, was silent, silent as though no brass cannon were mounted in the sight of all men, as though no twenty companies of sharpshooters were lying low with Maxims and repeating rifles waiting to receive the final charge. Were there cowardly Japanese it was a secret shared by no man with his neighbor. Sound to the core or not, they went on with the precision of a clock. As the infantry advanced, occasionally a huddled figure, inert, was grouped here and there with others who moaned piteously. At times a squad, sinking, would lose itself in a hollow, only to climb presently up the opposite slope, there to sink on one knee, rifles at fixed bayonets, while the lieutenant in command reconnoitered to right or left, searching for the line of best deploy. Then on, skurrying another few rods, to another halt, until they came to the precipitous rocks up which it seemed a goat would have skinned his shins in climbing. Here, hugging the mountain proper, having lost but few, considering the advance made, they waited for night.

Meanwhile, aloft, hell reigned. Shells constantly bursting apparently shattered guns and killed gunners, but when the dust cleared all was instantly life again, the gnomish figures busy—busy as ants with eggs. For a minute thus, then all would drop back into the earth simultaneously with the reply, and at the very moment that another Russian shell was in upon them.

Was it the same beyond in Namicoyama and in “203”? Doubtless the Russians were as safe, though with them the shells must have been multiplied by twenties, because the space of a few rods, lying exposed to every range, received the constant fire of every Japanese gun. The Russians had a wider target, a range of hills from which occasionally they could see smoke curling upward. It was far more difficult to hit than the Japanese target, for nothing was plain, all was guesswork. The Russians could not see a thing they were aiming at. A range of hills, seared with autumn, bare of husbandmen, innocent of apparent defense, alive with hissing venom, confronted them. They lashed it desperately as they could, frantically as a boy beset with nightmare. The little men had a plain target, parapets outlined against the sky, trenches clear and distinct. Yet the Japanese were often covered with dust from bursts on the slope beyond, and through the Valley of the Shadow the diabolic screeches mounted with the dying of day. Night came with the wild clamor on in full fury, the little brown squads still at the base of Namicoyama, the reserves creeping around toward “203.”

Could they climb it—that six hundred feet of almost perpendicular rock, where, in daytime, with sticks and hobnailed boots, the best of mountain climbers would have found an adventure? And they must go up dragging rifles, shrapnel dropping among them, shells bursting overhead, bullets mowing them down, not to rest at the top, but, once there, to plunge against troops well rested, superbly intrenched.

The reserves threw up shelter tents and staked down the flaps with heavy rocks, but the wind, howling across from the inlet, flung them to the laugh of the rising equinoctial. Some sought rest on bean straw, under blankets, the September moon streaming in, but there was no rest.

A flash in the eyes and the mountain is thrown into a silhouette of fire, then plunged into blackness. From the extreme Russian left the searchlights are wheeling into position, one by one, until the whole seven are out, playing day over the battlefield, throwing suspicious investigation into the little squads of brown. Science has intensified war. Formerly men could get their fill of fighting by day, but now they needs must flare the candle at both ends. Like Joshua, these generals are deciding their empires’ fates under light of their own ordering.

The second searchlight comes out of the right. In between, the others dance, now a minuet, now a tarantella. Then a red line streaks the air, parabola-like, and its end breaks into molten balls, illumining the Valley of the Shadow of Death as by candelabra of stars. Its path is crossed by another. Still a third leaps into life till the night is frightful with fireworks. Processions peaceful and gay have danced through the cities to such salvoes fostered by Pain. You have seen them on Coney Island, you have watched for them on Manhattan Beach, you have romped through merry summer nights canopied by their dazzle; you have seen them split into golden bursts and rain diamonds of child joy; but do not wish to see them bred by the Russians, grisly and deadly, laying bare every joint of action and throwing into ghastly relief every hope of surprise.

A growl among the mountains rolls into power, and a naval shell from our left has burst in “203.” The forts respond, the mountains reply. The small arms open up, the machine guns rattle, the pompoms clatter in. Pitch, fuzz, dingle and pop are drowned. Crash, roar, hurtle and boom are out. The devil is loose.

A clatter on the stones below comes nearer, steadily, rhythmically. Listen! The tread of soldiers marching! Soon an indistinct line wavers into sight. A low whistle and it turns square across the Valley of the Shadow toward that terrible din. Another whistle and it twists up from single to double file. Each man has his full kit on his back, an extra pair of hobnailed boots, the pick, the shovel, the rifle. The steel is hooded with brass caps, a challenge to the dew. Officers’ swords, sheathed in dull cloth, defy the glitter of sunlight and of searchlight. It is the reserve regiment advancing to reinforce at dawn. Company by company it passes, and at the end marches the gray-haired colonel, stumbling in the dark, peering off at the searchlights, blinking at their bravado. The troops enfile into the farther ravine and deploy by battalions. The din lessens not. So another grist is fed into the mill of war.

The reserves’ echo dies to the incoming of crunches on the stones as of a wagon lumbering—a heavy wagon. Then out of the mists a caisson rolls behind six horses, the mounts walking, calmly, slowly. Another caisson and another, then the guns—one, two, three, four, five, six in all—while overhead whistles the shot and beyond gleams the searchlight. The rear battery is going forward, past the front battery, almost to the base of Namicoyama, where, at a sixty-degree angle, it can reinforce the infantry as the sun comes up.

Sleep is fitful when blaze is flirting with blackness and sentries with death. Long before light the trench guards on the front ridge are waiting for the big guns to salute the morn. The fire has slackened. There is fair quiet. When one has heard the wild gabble of a thousand guns he is blasÉ before the chatter of a dozen. Down the Valley of the Shadow a shell sometimes wings a nasty way and the searchlights hold vigil, but the infantry sleeps.

Then a little light fades the immense shadows, and soon over the rim of the world peers a new day. Peace, beauty, tingling health—this for another moment—when off to the right a shell wheezes. The snap is touched. The army wakes. Again it is on—the fearful din, the unendurable bombardment. So it has been for two months; so it will be until the end. Again and again.

But what is that under the crest of Namicoyama where it rises, furze covered, its incandescent struggle fighting fog? A patch of brown, then a patch of blue, then a flag—yes, a flag—a white flag, with a red sun in the center, the most legible flag in the VolapÜk of bunting, the Rising Sun of Japan!

In the night they have done it because they have slipped the thongs of civilization and risen triumphant to the hold of rice paddy and sacred mountain. What they did was simple—they changed shoes; rather, they threw away shoes. If one asks how the Japanese took “203” the answer is in terms of feet.

Such heights had been attacked before with scant success. Boots, though the nails be hobbed, help no man trained as the chamois to nature’s aid. Yet boots were all they had. The government in flirting with the ways of white men recognized nothing but leather and thread as proper footgear for Mikado worshipers. But that was before “203.” Here, at last, the soldiers knew more than the officials of state. They knew enough to toss aside a weapon made for pavement fighting when they went against precipice and moss. Reduced to essentials, fighting for life, they forgot the ambitious new ways. Instead of boots they tied on their feet waraji, the Japanese straw sandal. Having none of proper make, they improvised from the rough rice sacking brought by the commissary. Since then the government has been compelled to officially supply waraji.

Barefooted, but for the tight cling of the straw, hid from the searchlights by the shadows of Namicoyama and “203,” in the night they had climbed the heights and are now waiting the introduction of Mr. Bombshell before they reel audaciously across the parapet.

The brown is khaki-covered men, the blue those with overcoats. Far down at the lower left is a gray-haired figure standing apart—the colonel. He makes no effort to shield himself. The artillery of two armies have concentrated their fire above his head. That is their business, no concern of his, so he hazily observes the unfurling of day beyond the Tiger’s Tail as he would dwell upon the empurpling of a convolvulus. At Nanshan he led the victorious charge. Three bullets went through his coat and two through his hat. He wears Shinto emblems and believes he was not born to be killed in battle. He has been in forty-seven engagements without a wound. His name is Tereda, and he commands the first regiment of the first division; in rank but a lieutenant-colonel, his colonel slain May 26th.

Shrapnel begins bursting above. The Russians are far from sleep, farther from death. It being high time for business, the white flag with the red sun in the center waves once to the left, once to the right, and twice to the front. It is the artillery signal. Again the ridge falls under the terrific fire of the day before. But this time the infantry is 150 yards nearer, and this 150 yards is in a direction similar to that pursued by a telephone lineman when he follows his calling. The men crouch low, their own shells bursting less than fifty yards above them.

The introduction is long. The Russians are saucy hosts. They parley and talk back with their big guns, and that bluster of the day before is repeated. All day long Tereda and his men emulate the furze, for when they take the fort they want night handy to help them intrench, to give them a bit of cover despite the searchlights and star bombs. Besides, one climb of that sort is enough for twenty-four hours. They must have the cumulation of another twenty-four for the final charge. Yet it is costly recuperation. Blood spurts frequently. Wounded wilt under the sun, the dead lie untouched.

At half-past four in the afternoon Tereda orders the final charge. Three cheers go up—Banzai! Banzai! Banzai! With bayonets fixed the squads deploying as before, the khaki-covered spots begin to move. In advance the men crawl hand over hand, helped by blessed waraji. Twenty feet from the parapet they pause and fling something that leaps through the air like balls from catcher to second base. These hand grenades of gun-cotton explode on and in the parapet, introduction more intimate. The brilliant bursts play off the fast settling evening as the khaki-covered ones go in, Tereda pausing and peering with his glass. The entire battalion tumbles over the parapet. Then the reserves begin climbing from the base.

Silence. All is over. What has happened? Five, ten minutes pass, then the firing recommences, but now the object is changed; all the Japanese shrapnel is playing over the road leading to the Chair fort and all the Russian fire is directed against Namicoyama. The Russians are retreating, throwing their rifles as they run. Over Namicoyama floats the white flag with the red sun in the center.

Two hours later a fat old man with a heavy beard and baggy trousers is brought in—a prisoner. An officer, originally in the commissary, he had been called into the line, business being dull in his department. He commanded six companies on Namicoyama. Wounded in the arm and sullen, he has no greeting for us.

“The pigs,” he cried; “I stood at the end of the trench with my pistol ready to shoot every bolter, but it was no use. The beasts! Ah, my poor Russia.”

He had a son in a Siberian regiment shot four days previously before his eyes. For a year he had had no word from his wife and two younger children in the Trans-Baikal, but he was well fed. Bearded, tanned, deep-eyed, he loomed with dignity and might above his captors. There was no consoling him.

“The beasts,” he cried, “papa disowns them. Why didn’t I use the pistol?”

There was plenty of flour and small-arm ammunition over there, he said. The troops were in good morale, but needed bucking up by the officers. What could be done for him?

“Nothing,” he replied. “My boy is dead, my wife, my children, where are they? And Russia, ah, Russia, where is she!”

To him Port Arthur had fallen.