noon
No great masses of troops advancing in serried lines , column after column , with colours proudly flying , and burnished bayonets glistening in the sun ; none of the old-fashioned pomp and circumstance of war when the opposing armies marched toward each other with bands playing , discharged their muskets when they were near enough to see the whites of their opponents ' eyes , and then charged with fixed bayonets , fighting it out hand to hand . That sort of battle went out of fashion with the introduction of the breech-loading rifle and the machine-gun ; and now , with between fifty and sixty thousand men in action , there were periods when not a solitary human being could be seen . And when any did appear , which was only at intervals , they were but few in number -- just a man here and a man there dotted about sparsely over a large area of ground , visible for perhaps half a dozen seconds , and then lost again , hidden behind cover of some sort . It was getting well on toward noon when a message reached me from the General to the effect that two batteries of Russian quick-fire field-guns had been discovered on the summit of Nan-kwang-ling -- a hill some eight hundred feet high , about a mile to the westward of the Nanshan Heights -- and requesting me to signal our ships in the bay to give their whole attention to those two batteries . Unfortunately for us , the tide in the bay was now on the ebb , and the _ Hei-yen _ and _ Tsukushi _ were obliged to haul off to avoid grounding ; but the _ Akagi _ and _ Chokai _ responded nobly to the call , creeping in until they actually felt the ground , and enveloping Nan-kwang-ling knoll in flame and smoke . I had scarcely finished signalling to the ships when a stir on the plain immediately below me indicated that the General considered the artillery `` preparation '' complete , and that the actual storming of the Russian position was now to be attempted . A battalion of our 1st Division , situated in the Japanese centre , suddenly deployed into the open , and commenced its advance by making a series of short rushes through some fields of green barley , on the opposite side of the road from Kinchau to Linshiatun , dashing forward a few yards , and then , as the machine-guns and rifles in the Russian trenches were turned upon them , sinking from view into the barley , through which they crept on hands and knees until the whistle of the leader or the call of a bugle gave the signal for another dash .