the Japanese soldiers—drew their sabres immediately, and instantly their horses were charging into the enemy’s line. Naturally, under such sudden circumstances, the thought of being killed never entered their heads. “The enemy!” or “Kill them!” was their only idea. Turning their horses suddenly roundabout, and grinding their teeth like angry wolves, they furiously charged the Japanese cavalry. The enemy must have felt the same impulse, for in an instant the Chinese found themselves surrounded with a host of terrible-looking faces. With them were intermingled numberless swords, flashing and hissing in every direction.
From that moment Khashoji lost all sense of time. He remembered strangely and clearly that the tall millet-stalks had swayed beneath his charging horse as if in a storm, and that red-hued sun was glaring down above their waving ears. But how long the noise of the battle had continued, or what losses had occurred, he could not remember at all.
He also recollected that in the confusion of the moment he had shouted madly and had frantically brandished his sabre. Once it had glittered with the colour of fire, but he could not remember whether it had struck anything. The hilt of his sword had become grimy and greasy with sweat. At the same time he felt a terrible thirst in his throat. Then all of a sudden there appeared right in front of him, a threatening-looking Japanese horseman, with his mouth wide open, and with eyes so dilated that his eyeballs seemed to be jumping out of their sockets. From a big rip in his redlined cap peeped the top of a head shaped like a chestnut.
Instinctively Khashoji raised his sabre and drove it down upon the ugly head and cap with all his strength. But what resisted his stroke was not the cap or the head beneath it, but the hard steel of the sword with which his assailant suddenly parried the blow with the splendid skill of a Japanese swordsman. The clashing sound of the two swords rang out with awful clarity amidst the deafening noise of the conflict, and a