hands clasped, looking into each other's eyes. Though they cannot speak each other's tongue, yet they read there that which no known language can express. The Russian stoops and picks something from the ground. It is the shattered crucifix he places it in his late opponent's hand. Tokugawa tugs at the little chain at his breast. The link gives, and he passes to the Russian officer his seal and signet. Again the two men grasp hands, and then they salute and turn. The cheer rises afresh as they stride back to their respective lines. No finger touches trigger until both, after a farewell wave, are back to cover again. A moment's pause. The Japanese reinforcements have arrived. A heavy fire, a shout, and the mass of Japanese advance and drive the Russians from the field.

143

XII.

THE OUTPOST.

IF you turn up a North China sailing directory you will find that the west coast of Korea is recommended to mariners with a note of warning. It is an iron-bound seaboard, and the northern portion of it, which hitherto has remained uncharted in the Admiralty records, for three months in winter is ice-bound. The coast from Yongampo to Fusan is fringed with a succession of rugged cliff-bound islets. Hundreds of pinnacled rocks and masses of cliff, apparently of no value to living creatures other than sea-birds. In winter a bleak, dreary, dangerous coast-line indeed. In summer, when the Yellow Sea is tranquil, the islands are of no import from their very barrenness

and inaccessibility. The reader will speculate what history, except of shipwreck, can be fathered upon a region so desolate and uninteresting. Of shipwreck, as it is brought to mind by a rockbound coast, we have no concern; but some of these inaccessible and unheard-of rocks for a brief period in the early months of the war were the means by which the great palpitating world heard the legends of sea disasters more ghastly than simple shipwrecks.

Two men sat crouching over a charcoal fire in the worst apology for a hut that imagination could conceive. Half cave, a quarter tent, and the remainder sods and board, it furnished the poorest shelter from the semi-blizzard that was raging outside. The men, in spite of the goatskin coats in which they were clad, seemed half perished with cold. They cowered over the brass pot that held their fire, and raked the embers together to increase the miserable heat. And well they might

cower, for the whole ramshackle erection swayed and rattled with the wind, while the driven sleet, bitter and searching, made its way through the many crevices in roof and wall. Outside a very tumult raged,— the wind howled and shrieked all round the dwelling, the ceaseless thunder of breaking waves showed that these two miserables were living on the brink of some seawashed cliff, while the brief intervals and lulls in the grinding storm were filled with the plaintive moan of wind-vibrating wires and stays. A glance round the hovel, and a stranger would have been stupefied. The light was good and bright-well it might be, for it was electric. Electricity in such a dwelling! And look on the shelves against the wall. Instrumentsinstruments the most modern and delicate that science could manufacture.

A bell rang,-electric too,—and presently a wheel began to click, slowly but deliberately. If you had closed your eyes you

K

your

could have imagined that you were in club listening to the mechanism that gives you the latest quotation from the Bourse. Slowly the instrument ticked. Both men listened, nodding out the dots and dashes as they read them. Then one of them

jumped to his feet.

"That is it that is our own-not the honourable Russian."

His companion rose and joined him, and together they pored over the long strip of paper as the symbols were ticked off on it at the rate of ten to fifteen words a minute. All the men could tell was that it was their

own cipher. Above that they had no knowledge, beyond the fact that as soon as they received the final group the message was to be transmitted farther. For half an hour the machine ticked on monotonously, and then the message ended. One of the men pulled an old oil-papered umbrella out of the corner, opened the creaking door, and dived into the blizzard