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212 THE SIEGE OF PORT ARTHUR
Russians back in their old place. The Japanese
deny this stoutly, and declare that, on the con-
trary, it was the Russians who used asphyxiating
bombs against them. Although in this war of
horrors nothing would astonish me, I shall refrain
from giving any opinion as to which of the two
tales—if either—is correct. My experience is
that, in the presence of a war correspondent at
any rate, both parties trifle with truth in a very
wanton way.
Finally the Japanese decided on digging a
trench all along the back of the caponier gallery
right down to its foundations, thus laying bare the
whole back wall. They would then chisel out
holes in the wall, fill them with dynamite, and
blow up the entire defence work. Quite a good
portion of this work had been completed before
the Russians, during one of their sorties, learnt
what was happening, and immediately commenced
counter-mining. On November i8th they ex-
ploded their mine, destroying the Japanese trench ;
but the mine had been so badly placed that, at
the same time, it blew a big opening in their own
caponier wall at the north-eastern corner (“j ”), with
the result that they had hurriedly to evacuate the
whole front part of the gallery. They still held
on to the narrow passage along the eastern flank,
the entrance to which was blocked with sand-bags.
Sand-bag partition walls were also built further in
across the passage, leaving only a small opening
in each, which they could easily close in case
they had to retire, and they built another sand-
bag wall across the moat (at “1”) to counterbalance
the loss of the front caponier, by keeping the
eastern flank of the moat under enfilading fire.
Early in the morning of the 21 st five pioneers
volunteered to steal out into the moat and place
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