Russian sharpshooters chanced to detect me and my assistant in
the act of signalling to our ships, and they at once favoured me with
their undivided attentions, to such purpose that I was compelled to beat
a hasty retreat. The change of position which I was compelled to make
was, however, advantageous rather than otherwise, for I found a
perfectly safe spot behind two tall boulders standing close together,
which, while effectually shielding me from the Russian bullets, still
enabled me to see all that was happening.

Yet, that "all" might be summed up in a very few words--just incessant
flashes of fire, great volumes of smoke, and, interspersed with the
smoke, patches of flying debris. Very little else. No great masses of
troops advancing in serried lines, column after column, with colours
proudly flying, and burnished bayonets glistening in the sun; none of
the old-fashioned pomp and circumstance of war when the opposing armies
marched toward each other with bands playing, discharged their muskets
when they were near enough to see the whites of their opponents' eyes,
and then charged with fixed bayonets, fighting it out hand to hand.
That sort of battle went out of fashion with the introduction of the
breech-loading rifle and the machine-gun; and now, with between fifty
and sixty thousand men in action, there were periods when not a solitary
human being could be seen. And when any did appear, which was only at
intervals, they were but few in number--just a man here and a man there
dotted about sparsely over a large area of ground, visible for perhaps
half a dozen seconds, and then lost again, hidden behind cover of some
sort.

It was getting well on toward noon when a message reached me from the
General to the effect that two batteries of Russian quick-fire
field-guns had been discovered on the summit of Nan-kwang-ling--a hill
some eight hundred feet high, about a mile to the westward of the
Nanshan Heights--and requesting me to signal our ships in the bay to
give their whole attention to those two batteries. Unfortunately for
us, the tide in the bay was now on the ebb, and the _Hei-yen_ and
_Tsukushi_ were obliged to haul off to avoid grounding; but the _Akagi_
and _Chokai_ responded nobly to the call, creeping in until they
actually felt the ground, and enveloping Nan-kwang-ling knoll in flame
and smoke.

I had scarcely finished signalling to the ships when a stir on the plain
immediately below me indicated