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THE OPENING OF THE BALL 59
taken up. Big naval guns and siege guns roar it
defiantly back ;
howitzers take up the call with
short, loud, angry barks, while a hundred field-
guns chime in and help to swell the thunder.
The peace of the beautiful summer day is torn to
tatters. Shells of all sizes are hurled through
the air. The sound-waves from the firing guns
spring forth and meet and cross each other and
mix with the report of the bursting shells and
their echo from the hills, and blend into a deafen-
ing, thundering fracas. In and around the
Russian lines of defence puffs of smoke and
clouds of dust leap into the air where the shells
have struck, and at times they are poured in so
thickly that it looks as if an immense hail-storm
were passing over the forts. Unceasingly, from
dawn till long after dark, the firing is kept up,
without respite, without mercy. The strongest
fire is concentrated on the Panlung and the North
Kikuan forts right in front of us. We can
literally see the walls crumbling. The straight
lines and the sharp angles disappear slowly, and
these forts become more and more like huge
formless mud-heaps, while their glacis and the
hill-sides gradually come to look like a rabbit
warren.
The Russian forts seem wonderfully silent and
subdued during this heavy bombardment. Only
a comparatively small number of shots are fired,
and these seem to be indiscriminately distributed
all over the Japanese lines, without any plan or
concentration. We had expected a hard-fought
artillery duel, such as ought to have taken place
according to all well-established rules and tradi-
tions ;
but in this we were disappointed. The
Japanese had it all their own way. We were
somewhat at a loss to explain and understand the
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