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.

Yet, although the advantages were all on the side of the defenders, the
patience and heroism of the Japanese steadily told, and on 4th October
they attacked a work at Yenchang, near Takhe Bay, and destroyed the two
machine-guns with which it was armed. This success was followed up by
the capture, on 16th October, of an immensely strong Russian position on
Hashimakayana Hill. Ten days later, the Japanese troops stormed and
took, after hours of sanguinary fighting, the two important positions of
Erhlung and Sungshushan, on the northern and north-western salients of
the old Chinese Wall; and these successes were considered to have
cleared the ground for the general assault which had been ordered from
headquarters in Japan.

For four days--27th, 28th, 29th, and 30th October--the Russian works
were subjected to such a terrific bombardment as, up to then, mortal
eyes had certainly never beheld. It reached its height about eight
o'clock on the morning of the 30th, and continued until about one
o'clock in the afternoon, during which the din was terrific and
indescribable. Shell and shrapnel fell upon the Russian works at the
rate of one hundred per minute, the forts resembled volcanoes in
eruption, from the continuous explosions of the shells which fell upon
them, and the entire landscape became veiled in a thick haze of smoke.
At one o'clock the preparation was thought to be complete; and ten
minutes later the great assault began--to end in complete and disastrous
failure! The Russian forts, supposed to have been silenced by those
four days of terrific bombardment, were as formidable as ever; and as
the stormers dashed forward they were met by so f