almost impossible for them to see the road by which they were travelling. But they knew what they had behind them they were the advance-guard of the army which, if the necessity should arise, would consist of 500,000 men; of the nation which, before it would acknowledge defeat, would find 20 millions of men prepared to enter upon a more desperate enterprise even than that in which this little advance-guard was now engaged. If Pingyang were reached in time, what would past hardships matter? what would it signify that the road from Hai-ju to Pingyang was strewn with the bodies of the weaklings from the forlorn-hope?

A week later all was forgotten. Kawada and his companions lay in the snow trenches north of Pingyang. They cooked their rice themselves, and were able, when not on duty, to sit round a bowl of smouldering charcoal and watch

behind them the great black line winding its way through the snowdrifts, which declared the head of Kuroki's army as it marched up to occupy the position which the advance-guard had seized. And as Kawada gazed out across the miles of white in front of him he ceased to speculate as to the chances of Hoorji having found another lover: his only thought for the moment was when the rifle, which he nursed so carefully under the flap of his fur-lined coat, would be called upon to do its duty. And that very morning, as he leaned upon the parapet, far away in the north he made out a few black specks standing out in bold relief against the snow. He called a sergeant, and together through glasses they examined the suspicious spots. They were coming up from under a rise. More and more appeared, until at least the total reached twenty, and as they came nearer the magnifying-glasses unmasked the tell

tale lance-poles. These specks were the first messengers from the great Power of the north. They were the advance-guard of six sotnias of Cossacks detailed to seize and hold Pingyang.

In less than an hour Kawada's rifle burnt the first cartridge in the land struggle of the Russo-Japanese war.

28

IV.

RIVER-FIGHTING.

CHINAMPO, April 1904. THE Korean fisherman did not like his job in the least. He cowered down beneath the gunwale chattering like a maniac, and with difficulty maintained his hold on the tiller and the sheet of the lateen sail. No one took any heed of his chattering, and save that the naval lieutenant threatened him occasionally with his scabbard he was left to his own devices. The junk's sails were well filled, and as the current was with her she was making a good eight knots as she threaded her way between the sand-dunes. Ever and anon the boat had to force its way through fields of driftice, for the Yalu had only just commenced

to disgorge its winter surface. But it was not the difficulties of navigation which had reduced the Korean fisherman to such a state of abject terror,—it was the fact that he had been impressed by the boat's crew of Japanese sailors from the scouting gunboat to take them up to the mouth of the river. None knew better than he that seven miles of the course that he was now steering would take them right into the Russian lines. And his chattering at the moment was due to the uncertainty of thought whether it were better to be shot at once by the revolver hanging aggressively from the lieutenant's belt, or to have his lease of life deferred until they were at a range from which the Russian outposts would do the killing. But the little lieutenant recked nothing of this argument: he was busy disposing of his seven men at the thwarts, and at the same time scanning the skylines of the sand-dunes as they raced past.