was a Japanese pillow, at the other a little table. On this lay, wrapped in clean white paper, a short knife. Watanabe strode to the sheet; he bowed to his comrades, and they all stood at attention in mute salute. He then sat down and arranged his posture so that his neck might lie upon the pillow. Having settled himself he proceeded to unfold the lower portion of his dress and lay bare some four inches of skin from the waistband upwards. The second engineer handed him the papercovered knife; he seized it in the middle of the blade, and turning his head, bowed as well as he could in his prostrate position to his comrades. His eyes finally sought the second engineer's. This officer was in position he stood at Watanabe's right side with a naked sword in his hand. At an inclination of the doomed man's head he : raised the blade skywards. With one bold, firm, and determined action, Watanabe self-inflicted a slight incision from left to right; he turned his eyeballs upwards, the second engineer caught the signal, and with a single sweep of the sword he helped Watanabe to vindicate his own honour, the honour of his forbears, and the fair name of Japan. A fire was at hand, and in half an hour Watanabe, his uniform, and his sword had been treated to the obsequies of a fallen Japanese hero. When the watch on the Oshima saw the volume of smoke rising skywards from the island, they lowered the emblem of the rising sun half-mast from the peak. Thus it was that when foreigners in Tokio read the notice in the Japanese papers that Lieutenant K. E. Watanabe had died on active service, and had been given a posthumous decoration by the Emperor, they came to the conclusion that there had been some naval side issue which the Japanese had not considered it expedient to publish in detail. A SOLITARY observer stood upon the crest of a snow-wrapped eminence. As he was enveloped in a voluminous military cloak with a hood, it was almost impossible to make out the features of the man, or to discover any reason for his solitary observations. A little scrubby grey beard, upon which the breath was already frozen, and two tiny twinkling coals of eyes, were all that were visible. But away in front of the observer stretched perhaps the most pregnant military spectacle that the century is likely to see. The knoll upon which the observer stood was a detached eminence a little to the rear of a broken ridge: at the foot of this ridge lay a white-carpeted valley sloping up, at first gently, and then almost precipitately, to a second barrier of snowcapped rock. Away beyond this rose huge masses of volcanic débris, a frowning wall of Nature's ramparts. But in spite of the chaste mantle with which the elements had striven to shroud Nature's handiwork, the whole panorama bristled with the works of man. There was not an eminence but showed by its bevelled crest-line that sappers and engineers had laboured to aid Nature in her scheme of massive strength. In the distance loomed great citadels with blasted parapet and stonerevetted curtain. In the middle distance the snow - drifts ill disguised fantastic patterns, whose sinuous trace betrayed ingenious device in modern obstacles and abbattis. And then at the solitary observer's feet, the plain, that should have been a bare expanse of winter white, was coursed and seamed with earthworks, so that with parallel and traverse, coveredway and shelter-trench, it gave the impression of some huge irrigation or mining area. It would be hard to find a simile to describe a panorama so enthralling: if you turned with the solitary observer and looked behind the knoll, the scene that met your gaze at once pictured a gigantic ant-heap the reverse of every hill was teeming with thousands of human beings. Ant-like, hundreds of these were grouped beneath the crest-lines; others were labouring in long strings, hauling supplies, ammunition, or implements to various summits; while far below were the countless tabernacles which protected the vast besieging army from the rigours of a Manchurian winter. A great transport queue, men, vehicles, and animals, was slowly crawling northwards, marking the channel which fed 80,000 men. Here and there faint wisps of smoke curled skyward. A |