that I had a most excellent view of practically the entire
scene of operations, and no sooner did our artillery open fire than the
Russian batteries replied with a crash that seemed to make the very air
quiver.

A land battle is a very different spectacle from a sea battle, in this
respect: that, in the latter, a shell either hits or misses its mark,
and if it misses there is a splash or two and that ends the matter, so
far as that particular shell is concerned. But ashore, every shell,
whether or not it finds its mark, hits something, though it be only the
ground, and immediately there is a violent explosion, a flash of fire, a
great cloud of smoke, and a violent scattering of dust, clods of earth,
and stones--if nothing worse. Thus, I must confess that for a few
seconds I was perfectly amazed to see the slopes of Mount Sampson, on
the one hand, where our artillery was placed, and the Nanshan Heights,
on the other, where were situated the Russian batteries, suddenly burst
into great jets of flame, clouds of smoke, and flying debris, as the
shells showered down upon them. The explosions of shrapnel were easily
distinguished from those of common shell, for the former almost
invariably burst in the air, the smoke from the explosions standing out
against the background of sky or hill like tufts of cotton-wool that had
suddenly sprung into existence from nowhere.

Very shortly after the artillery duel began, I saw the Japanese infantry
moving out to storm the Nanshan Heights, and I smiled to myself at the
acuteness of their leaders, for the men began their advance in such open
formation that a shrapnel shell seldom succeeded in accounting for more
than one man, and often enough it failed to do even that. Of course
they were seen from the trenches, and a terrific rifle-fire was opened
upon them, but for the same reason it was very ineffective--at the
outset at least, for a rifleman had to be a crack shot to bowl over his
man at a distance of close upon a mile. And if one wished to get his
man, he had to aim at him, and correctly judge the distance too. This,
of course, was at the beginning of the attack; later on, matters became
a good deal more favourable for the defenders and correspondingly
adverse to the attacking force.

I was interestedly watching the development of the attack upon the
heights, when a galloper dashed up to me with a message from the General
requesting me to signal our ships in the offing to co