I felt a chill creeping down my
spine. I knew what sort of a blow was coming, and I was afraid of
it.
"Why?" I asked.
The Chinaman bowed and smiled.
"Because you are the first," he said. "You are the only
correspondent to arrive who has seen the battle of Liao-Yang."
The chill turned to a sort of nausea. I knew then what disaster had
fallen, but I cheated myself by pretending the man was misinformed.
"There was no battle," I protested. "The Japanese told me themselves
they had entered Liao-Yang without firing a shot." The cable
operator was a gentleman. He saw my distress, saw what it meant and
delivered the blow with the distaste of a physician who must tell a
patient he cannot recover. Gently, reluctantly, with real sympathy
he said, "They have been fighting for six days."
I went over to a bench, and sat down; and when Lynch and Fox came in
and took one look at me, they guessed what had happened. When the
Chinaman told them of what we had been cheated, they, in their turn,
came to the bench, and collapsed. No one said anything. No one even
swore. Six months we had waited only to miss by three days the
greatest battle since Gettysburg and Sedan. And by a lie.
For six months we had tasted all the indignities of the suspected
spy, we had been prisoners of war, we had been ticket-of-leave men,
and it is not difficult to imagine our glad surprise that same day
when we saw in the harbor the white hull of the cruiser Cincinnati
with our flag lifting at her stern.
