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220 THE SIEGE OF PORT ARTHUR
awkward for the Japanese. They could either give
battle to the Japanese fleet or simply carry out, on
a bigger scale, the Vladivostock squadron’s tactics
during June and July, making the communications
between Japan and her armies unsafe, and hamper-
ing and destroying her commerce. No wonder
that the navy made strong remonstrances to Tokyo,
demanding that the besieging army should do its
utmost to gain positions from whence the Russian
fleet could be destroyed or driven out. These
remonstrances became so strong a little later on,
that the army here received peremptory orders to
make the attack before everything was fully ready
for it. But of this later.
The first problem the Japanese had to face was
the crossing of the moats at Sungshuh and Erhlung
forts. Their former experiences here and the
lessons they were learning from the fighting in the
rabbit warrens at North Kikuan fort had made
them realize that the safest and easiest way would
be to adopt the methods to which they had at last
resorted at the latter place—namely, to dig a
trench right to the bottom of the back wall of the
caponiers, chisel out holes in this wall, fill them
with dynamite and explode the charges. This
would not only destroy the caponiers and drive out
their defenders, but the ddbris from the explosion
would help to fill up the moat and facilitate the
passage across.
At Sungshuh fort the Japanese had discovered
that the moat was provided with caponiers under
the front counterscarp ;
but whether it extended
along the whole front, as at North Kikuan, or
whether there only were caponiers in the corners,
they could not tell, as the central part did not
show any loopholes in the masonry wall facing the
moat. Neither did they know, of course, how
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