The Reason No One Was Looking At Them Was Because Most Of Us Had Gone To Sleep.

The rest, with a bitter experience of Japanese promises, had doubted there would be a battle, and had prepared themselves with newspapers.

And so, while eight miles away the preliminary battle to Liao-Yang was making history, we were lying on the grass reading two months' old news of the St. Louis Convention.

The sight greatly disturbed our teachers.

"You complain," they said, "because you are not allowed to see anything, and now, when we show you a battle, you will not look."

Lewis, of the Herald, eagerly seized his glasses and followed the track of the Siberian railway as it disappeared into the pass.

"I beg your pardon, but I didn't know it was a battle," he apologized politely. "I thought it was a locomotive at Anshantien Station blowing off steam."

And, so, teacher gave him a bad mark for disrespect.

It really was trying.

In order to see this battle we had travelled half around the world, had then waited four wasted months at Tokio, then had taken a sea voyage of ten days, then for twelve days had ridden through mud and dust in pursuit of the army, then for twelve more days, while battles raged ten miles away, had been kept prisoners in a compound where five out of the eighteen correspondents were sick with dysentery or fever, and finally as a reward we were released from captivity and taken to see smoke rings eight miles away! That night a round-robin, which was signed by all, was sent to General Oku, pointing out to him that unless we were allowed nearer to his army than eight miles, our usefulness to the people who paid us our salaries was at an end.

While waiting for an answer to this we were led out to see another battle. Either that we might not miss one minute of it, or that we should be too sleepy to see anything of it, we were started in black darkness, at three o'clock in the morning, the hour, as we are told, when one's vitality is at its lowest, and one which should be reserved for the exclusive use of burglars and robbers of hen roosts. Concerning that hour I learned this, that whatever its effects may be upon human beings, it finds a horse at his most strenuous moment. At that hour by the light of three paper lanterns we tried to saddle eighteen horses, donkeys, and ponies, and the sole object of each was to kick the light out of the lantern nearest him. We finally rode off through a darkness that was lightened only by a gray, dripping fog, and in a silence broken only by the patter of rain upon the corn that towered high above our heads and for many miles hemmed us in. After an hour, Sataki, the teacher who acted as our guide, lost the trail and Captain Lionel James, of the Times, who wrote "On the Heels of De Wet," found it for him.

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