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It was the last good-bye to Emperor, country, and all who were nearest and dearest to them of that heroic little band of Japanese infantry-men who preferred to die fighting gloriously, rather than win inglorious safety by surrender. The Russians had made an end of the affair by torpedoing the transport, and she must have sunk within a very few minutes.
And the curious thing about it was that there was nothing, no sudden spurt of flame, no smoke wreath, no crack of a rifle, to account for these casualties. That is to say, I could neither see nor hear anything; but the fact was that those Cossacks were going down before the calm, deliberate rifle-fire of the concealed Japanese infantry-men.
The infantry-men who had re-manned the gun were by this time shot down, and, as none had come to replace them, it was served by an officer alone. Just as I gave the order to advance to the twenty men who were to follow me, this officer fell.
Crook started back for Fort Yuma, much wiser than he came, while we pushed farther out on the Butterfield route, with two companies of cavalry and fifty infantry-men. We traveled four days from our old camp before making a general halt.
Rain, rain, and rain! How it fell on red Virginia that November of '64! How it wore away alertness! The infantry-men whom we used to call "doughboys," for there was always a pretended feud between the riders and the trudgers often seemed going to sleep in the night in their rain-filled holes far beyond the breastworks, each with its little mound of earth thrown up toward the beleaguered town.
And as man after man pushed forward, others crept out, following, until the whole of the ground between our lines and the base of the heights was dotted with Japanese infantry-men creeping ever closer up to the first line of the Russian defence, the terrible maze of barbed wire entanglements.
A little party, hardly more than twenty infantry-men, marched steadily out from the open gateway of the Fort. The first file bore bayonets fixed upon their guns, and the naked savages fell slowly back before the polished steel.
"First, there come along some cavalry-men, and they burned the depot; then come along some infantry-men, and they tore up the track, and burned it;" and just before he left they had "sot fire to the well." It was a square pit about twenty-five feet deep, boarded up, with wooden steps leading to the bottom, wherein was a fine copper pump, to lift the water to a tank above.
Fine-looking men they were, too, these infantry-men, bronzed, well-built fellows, with heavy, high cheek-bones, longish noses, black mustaches, and dark eyes, who, whatever their qualities of initiative might be, looked to have no end of endurance and ability to stay put.
The defenders behind their low epaulement do not pant; their marksmen only at first are allowed to fire; these make things unpleasant for the massed gunners out yonder, who share their attentions with the spraying-out infantry-men. The quick-firing cannon of the defence are getting in their work methodically.
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