Chapter XXXVII

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.

We were riding over a hill near the Sha-ho. The dead lay upon the slope like livid stains on a green carpet. In the trench--a deep scar across the brow of the hill--was a tangled web of crimson and purple and grey rent asunder by black hands and ashen faces.

Three days before I saw the tidal wave of war sweep over this hill of horrors. Out of the clouds came men in blue with rifles in their hands--a company of Japanese. Scattering, they sped down the slope and vanished in a brown cleft; in a moment they appeared once more, racing furiously up the hill.

From the earth sprang a grey line tipped with fire and steel. At sight of the Russians the men in blue halted and turned. Were they running away? A sword flashed in the air and the Japanese ranged themselves--a line of blue upon which rushed the grey crest like a tumultuous sea. The waves met and mingled--a heaving flood over which played the lightning of steel. Blade in hand the Russian leader leapt forward to meet his foe. A gleam of light and the point of the Samurai sword pierced his neck. A jet of blood spurted from his nostrils and the steel dropped from his dying grasp. Another moment and the waves divided, leaving the hill flecked with grey forms. Broken and thinned, the blue wave swept on and engulfed the trench where the dead and dying lay.

Strenuous days followed laborious nights, when wounded died and living fought. How could anything in that trench be alive! It was an open grave heaped with dead.

“I saw his leg move,” protested my interpreter.

Prone on his back lay a Russian soldier. His eyes looked into mine. Pillowed on a corpse, his couch was of dead men.

In a second we were off our horses and in the trench. His head was covered with clay that was dyed a dark crimson; his open mouth was filled with earth baked hard by the sun. Surely, he must be dead. The eyes sought mine and followed me.

With hasty fingers I probed the clay and found where the bullet had struck. It must have penetrated the brain. Still the eyes followed me. I probed again. The bullet had merely grazed the scalp. It was a case of concussion. We took a great-coat from a dead comrade at his side and dragged it under him. Yielding to threats, a Chinese servant got into the trench to help us. As we raised the living from the dead the stiffened limbs relaxed and the leg moved. With a cry of horror the Chinaman leapt out of the trench and fled screaming down the hill.

We lifted our burden out of the noisome pit and laid him on the ground; we broke the earthen gag and cleaned his mouth, and gave him drops of whisky and water. From his wounded head we scraped the crimsoned clay and saw that it might yet be well with him. And all the time his eyes sought mine.

Captain Okada rode to a cottage at the foot of the hill and brought back some Chinamen. They placed the soldier on a door and bore him away.

Three days later we entered a house filled with wounded Russian and Japanese. A wan face smiled upon us; two bright eyes welcomed us. It was our wounded soldier. He could not speak, but he nudged a comrade and pointed to the men who had plucked him out of the grave.

We rode toward the wood beyond the narrow valley where hundreds had fallen before that dread company in blue. A voice called to us. We turned and saw only the dead. A low, timorous voice haunted the dread stillness of this hecatomb. Our eyes wandered over the dead in search of a sign of the living. A bush opened as though stirred by the wind, and out of the green peeped a wan face.

The man’s legs were shattered: one limb hung loose like the empty sleeve of a coat. He had bound up his wounds and crawled into the bush, where he dug a shallow grave in which to hide himself from the enemy whom he had been taught to fear even in death. A few crusts of black bread and a bottle of water had kept life in him for three days, until the appearance of a European gave him courage to betray his hiding place. We took a coat from a dead soldier, and with two rifles made a stretcher upon which the groaning burden was borne to hospital.

In the nullah through which the enemy fled under murderous fire, the dead and dying lay like leaves of an autumn forest. Here I happened upon a strangely pathetic group--a wounded Russian attended by two Japanese soldiers. They had made him a bed of coats, had emptied their water bottles down his parched throat, had lighted a cigarette for him, and had settled down for a comfortable talk, for wounds and death have a tongue that needs no interpreter.

Near the entrance to this valley of the shadow was a field of maize. The sheaves stood like towers of gold. Days before, when the guns woke the echoes among the hill, and this valley was an active volcano, I saw the farmer fleeing like Lot from the city of destruction. Children clung to his dark blue robe, while his wife stumbled with a bundle in her arms.

The sheaves called in vain to the husbandman, for when death is reaper the harvest of the earth is ungarnered. Suddenly, as we looked, one of those golden towers burst open, and out darted a pale figure with uplifted hands.

“Kick him up!” It is not pleasant to see a soldier on his knees, and a Japanese is the proudest of men. The Russian was unhurt, but had been hiding for three days and nights without food. He, too, had waited for the sight of a European, and was not content until he had from Captain Okada a note in Japanese that gave him courage to approach the temple on the hill.

Thus did we make our way over the field of battle until we came again to the hill of the dead. Upon the green slope, trampled red with bloody feet, lay the drummer who had sounded the alarm. His hands still grasped the drumsticks, his face was driven through the drum, and by his side was stretched a charred and naked figure upon which the fire of a grenade had fed. About him lay his comrades like warriors taking their rest. They had fought a good fight, and slept the sleep that knows not waking.