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AFTER THE BALL 107
works built ;
some of the old bomb-proofs could
still be used, and new ones were constructed, so
that the garrison could be strengthened from day
to day. The forts were submitted to intermit-
tent heavy bombardments, and sniping from the
Chinese wall and the nearest Russian positions
went on uninterruptedly day and night. The
Japanese casualties for the first couple of weeks
averaged a hundred a day in each fort until, by
about September 8th, their improved condition
forced the Russians to give up the idea of re-
taking them, although the sniping was kept up to
the end of the chapter. I visited the forts some
time afterwards, and found them so honeycombed
with saps and trenches and so filled up with
breastworks and bomb-proofs that it was impos-
sible to form any idea of what they had looked
like before the Japanese captured them.
Seeing the impossibility of recapturing the
forts, the Russians, in order to diminish their
value to the enemy as an appui for a later attack,
set to work to fortify the Chinese wall to a much
greater extent than before, not only behind the
Panlung forts, but along its whole length. During
the attacks on August 22nd and 24th the Japanese
had been able to rush the Chinese wall without
much difficulty and send troops across to the
other side for an attack on Wantai fort. But this
line of communication between the forts formed
too important a link in the whole system of
defence for the Russians to allow it to happen
again. They therefore set to work with a will,
and soon put it in such a state of defence that it
became a real enceinte along the whole eastern
fort-ridge, against which the Japanese later on
had to approach by means of saps in the same
way as against the forts which it connected.
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