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HELL 211
attempt. A great percentage of those killed down
in this inferno was blown to mincemeat, and had
to be shovelled into bags to be carried away.
Day after day passed, and, in spite of consider-
able losses, no headway was made. The awful
struggle down in the dark cellars and the horrible
sights of their killed and wounded comrades began
to tell severely on the nerves of the men, and the
Japanese endeavoured to think of other means
and to devise new schemes for driving out the
Russians.
One suggested idea was to erect pumping
machinery and flood the moat, defences and all
but the nearest water supply sufficiently large for
the purpose, the sea, was many miles away. It
would be a slow and costly, and, moreover, a very
dubious experiment, and the plan was therefore
abandoned.
They next tried to pile up stalks of kaoliang (the
Chinese high millet) and set fire to them in order
to smoke out the Russians. But the device did
not work well ;
the draught took the smoke the
wrong way, through the Japanese chambers, chok-
ing them and for a time forcing them out of their
part of the gallery. The experiment was too
dangerous to be tried again.
Russian officers told me of another scheme, of
a still more diabolical character, which they assert
the Japanese employed. They sent down a man,
rigged out in a diver’s dress, complete with air-
hose and every essential, and provided with a
small air-pump, by which he pumped the galleries
full of asphyxiating gases. But, they say, it was
a stratagem that cut both ways ;
for, though it
certainly drove out the Russians, it also stopped
the Japanese from entering until the air had
become pure again,—and then they found the
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