346           A Staff Officer's Scrap-Book
man of straw strikes me as being a very emblematical personage.
Three hundred yards to the west of the advancing Japanese was the spur of Makurayama neck, and 250 yards behind that spur (although they did not know it) were the two infantry battalions entrusted with the defence of this part of the Russian position, snugly sleeping in their camp. Had the Japanese been omniscient, however, they could not have acted with greater promptitude; and, without one moment's delay, they pressed eagerly, like a pack of hounds, after the flying picquet, on towards the Makurayama neck. On the far side of the hill the shots fired at the picquet had given the alarm; and in a confused crowd, half dressed, half awake—just exactly as the British reserves were brought into the firing-line at Majuba—the Russians were now hurrying up the neck from the west. Even at such a critical moment a great deal still depended on chance. As in the race for the ridge which took place between our cavalry and the Boers at Welcome Farm, in South Africa, the side which first reached the crest, even if it were only by ten yards, would have an immense advantage. The Japanese had the luck, as usual, and just gained the summit by that very distance of ten yards. As they topped the neck, to their amazement they found themselves face to face with a half-clad, disorganised crowd of Russian soldiers, breathless, apparently without leaders. In a moment the Japanese had flung themselves down, and were firing for dear life into the fully exposed mass just beneath the muzzles of their rifles. The Russians, although two to one in numbers, had everything else against them. Their men were in confusion; there seemed to be no leader generally known to every one who might have given orders.  The