Chapter Fifteen.I am thanked in Presence of the Army.The Japanese loss, incurred in the struggle for possession of the Nanshan Heights, amounted to over four thousand, killed and wounded. What the Russian loss in killed and wounded totalled up to I do not think we ever knew, excepting that, by the evidence of the captured trenches alone, it must have been tremendously heavy. Their material losses, however, amounted to sixty-eight guns, many of which were of 8-inch or 6-inch calibre, ten machine-guns, three searchlights, a dynamo, and a considerable quantity of ammunition and food; while the victory gave to the Japanese the complete command of the isthmus, by enabling General Nakamura to seize Linshiatun, and Fort Hoshangtao, in its immediate neighbourhood, thus opening the way to the occupation of Nan-kwang-ling and Dalny, and the advance of Oku’s army upon Port Arthur.As soon as it became evident that fighting was over for the day—by which time it had become too dark for me to signal to our squadron in the offing—I made my way down the hillside to the spot where the headquarters staff was established and, seeking General Oku’s tent, entered and reported myself. The General received me very kindly and courteously, but I could see in a moment that he was tremendously busy, the tent being full of officers to whom he was rapidly issuing orders. Having therefore reported myself and received orders to remain in camp for the night, I withdrew and sought the hospitality of my hosts of the previous night, who accorded me a very warm and cordial welcome. But there was none of that joyousness, that exaltation of spirits that I had expected to see as a result of the brilliant victory which we had gained; our numbers were less than they had been on the previous night, the absentees were lying out under the stars, either dead or wounded, somewhere yonder upon those shot-scored, blood-drenched slopes of Nanshan, and the joy of victory was quenched in sorrow for the fallen. We snatched a hasty, almost silent meal, and then those of us who had not to go forth on duty rolled ourselves in our cloaks and sought the relief of sleep.For my own part, I slept like a log, and only awoke when the bugles sounded the reveille. Our little party turned out, tubbed, took breakfast, and then, at the sound of the “assembly,” sallied forth to see what was to be the next item on the programme.Strong ambulance parties had been busily engaged all through the night, collecting the wounded and bringing them in to the hospital tents, but that work was now practically finished, and the preparations for the disposal of the dead had not yet been begun. The still weary troops were falling in, under arms, and in the distance I recognised General Oku, surrounded by the members of his staff, already on the ground. The commanding officers were at their posts, the non-commissioned officers were busily engaged in seeing that the troops were all in order for inspection, and a few minutes later the roll call was being gone through. This done, the troops were put through a few simple evolutions which terminated in their being drawn up in close formation constituting three sides of a hollow square, with the men all facing inward. General Oku then summoned an aide-de-camp to his side, gave him a brief order, and the aide, saluting, turned away and glanced rapidly about him, finally making his way toward where I now stood alone, at no great distance.He halted within about six paces of me, saluted, and said:“The Commander-in-Chief desires your immediate presence, most honourable Captain. He stands yonder.”“Right!” I said. “I will join him at once. Have you any idea what he wants me for?”“I think I can guess,” replied my companion, as he fell into step beside me, “but I am sure that the General will prefer to make that known to you himself.”I said no more, and a couple of minutes later we halted before the general staff, and Oku took and returned my salute. Then he shook hands with me with much cordiality, and requested me to take up a position alongside him, on his right hand. This done, he proceeded to make a little speech to the closely packed troops. Shorn of the rather strange—to Western ears—flowery phraseology peculiar to the Japanese, his speech ran somewhat as follows:“Soldiers of the Second Japanese Army, I gladly seize the first available opportunity that presents itself to tender you, on behalf of our august Emperor and the people of Japan, my most heartfelt thanks for the glorious victory which, by your indomitable courage and self-sacrifice, you so nobly achieved yesterday. The difficulties which you were called upon to surmount were so stupendous and the valour of the enemy so great, that there was a moment when I almost became persuaded that the position which you were attacking was impregnable, and that all the courage and devotion which you had displayed had gone for nothing. Yet I could not quite bring myself to believe that soldiers of Japan would ever permit themselves to be beaten, under any circumstances, however adverse; I therefore called upon you again for one last, supreme effort, and the valour and devotion with which you responded to my call is attested by the victorious presence of our glorious flag upon the heights to-day.”Here the General was interrupted by a soul-stirring shout of “Banzai!” from the exultant troops. The echoes of the shout had not died away among the surrounding hills before the serried masses of infantry were once more silent and motionless as statues, and Oku resumed:“I am proud, your officers are proud, and I am sure that you yourselves are proud, of your glorious achievement. Yet we soldiers must not arrogate to ourselves the entire credit of so magnificent a victory. Without the assistance of the navy, that victory—I say it frankly—would have been impossible. The sailors therefore are entitled to an equal share of the glory which we yesterday reaped on the slopes of those terrible heights; and I rejoice that chance has afforded me so early an opportunity as this to tender my personal thanks, the thanks of my officers, and the thanks of every soldier in the ranks, to the navy, here represented by the noble and gallant Captain Swinburne.”Here there were further shouts of “Banzai!” even more enthusiastic, if that were possible, than those which preceded them. The General raised his hand for silence, and presently proceeded:“We are, however, indebted to Captain Swinburne, not only as representing the navy, but also in a purely personal form. All through the trying hours of yesterday he stood on the slopes of those heights, alone save for the companionship of a solitary signaller, exposed, during some part of the time, to the pitiless fire of the enemy, and in constant danger of being captured; and during the whole of that time he devoted himself unsparingly to the task of directing the fire of our ships to the spots where from time to time it was most urgently needed; crowning this great service by sending a communication to the commander of the 4th Division which enabled that officer to effect the diversion which resulted in our hard-won victory. I have, therefore, now in the presence of you all, the honour to tender to Captain Swinburne, on behalf of our august Emperor, thus publicly, heartfelt thanks for the inestimably valuable services which he yesterday rendered to the cause of Japan.”So saying, General Oku turned to me and gave me a hearty handshake, an example which was immediately followed by the officers of the staff, while the troops put their caps upon their bayonets and waved them enthusiastically, yelling “Banzai!” until I am sure they must have felt as hoarse as crows.This little ceremony over, I received the General’s permission to rejoin my ship as soon as he had penned a dispatch to Admiral Misamichi, who was in command of the squadron, and which he requested me to deliver. This dispatch I received about half an hour later, from Oku’s own hands, whereupon I bade him and the members of his staff farewell, wished them the best of luck in their further encounters with the enemy, and then hurried away to the little cove on the north side of the bay, which I had used on two or three previous occasions, and where I had a shrewd suspicion that I should find my boat awaiting me. I was not mistaken, and shortly after six bells in the forenoon watch I was aboard theTsukushi, handing over General Oku’s dispatch to the Admiral. The latter at once read it, and seemed much gratified at its contents, which, however, he did not communicate to me. But I shrewdly surmised that it was a letter of thanks for the services rendered by the squadron and an intimation that our presence was no longer needed. And, so far as the latter part of my assumption was concerned, I was doubtless right, for after a little chat, during which I briefly related my experiences of the previous day—learning in return that theChokaihad lost her commander and two men killed, with two lieutenants and five men wounded—I received instructions to return to my ship, as the squadron would presently proceed to rejoin Admiral Togo at his base. And an hour later we were all steaming out of the bay.Two days after our arrival at the base, the destroyerKageroarrived with mails for the fleet, and, to my great surprise, she brought for me a letter from my Uncle Bob, as well as one from my chum, young Gordon, and another from Sir Robert.Naturally, I first opened the letter from Uncle Bob, for not only was it the first letter which I had received from any of the family since my “disgrace,” but also the envelope was deeply edged with black, and my first fear was that it might contain the announcement of the death of dear Aunt Betsy. But upon extracting the contents of the envelope I was at once reassured, for I saw that it really consisted of two letters, one from Uncle Bob, and the other from my aunt. There had been a death in the family, however, that of Cousin Bob, the author of the trouble which had resulted in my dismissal from the British Navy. It appeared that while engaged in battle practice there had been a bad accident on board theTerrible, one of her quick-firers having burst, killing two men and wounding five others, one of the latter so seriously that he had subsequently died. That one was Bob; and when informed by the ship’s surgeon that he had but a few hours to live, he had sent for the chaplain and to him had made a full confession of his crime, declaring that he had been spurred to it by blind, unreasoning jealousy of me. The chaplain, horrified at what he heard, took down the confession in writing, and poor Bob had signed it after the chaplain had added, at the dying lad’s request, an expression of deep contrition for his misdeed and a prayer to me for forgiveness of the wrong which he had done me. The two letters were sad reading, for they had been penned by heart-broken people who had not only lost their only son, but had learned, at the very moment of their loss, that all their pride in him had been misplaced, and that he had been guilty of a deliberate, despicable, cruel crime. Their shame and sorrow were patent in every sentence of the letters, indeed they made no effort to conceal them, and they finished up by saying that, Bob being gone from them, and gone so tragically, they hoped I would forgive them for any hard thoughts they may have had of me, and would be a son to them in place of the one they had lost. They further begged that, my innocence now being established, I would lose no time in hastening home to them, to comfort them in their bitter bereavement, and to take steps to procure my reinstatement in the British Navy, which, they had been informed, might probably be accomplished without much difficulty under the circumstances.The letter from Sir Robert Gordon was also chiefly in reference to Bob’s death, the particulars of which, and of his confession, he had learned from his son Ronald. He also was of opinion that, in view of Bob’s confession, it ought not to be very difficult to secure the cancellation of my expulsion, whenever I might choose to return to England. But he said no word suggesting that I should return at once; on the contrary, he offered his own and Lady Gordon’s very hearty congratulations upon the frequency with which my name had been mentioned in the papers as having been specially referred to by Togo in his dispatches, and they both expressed the hope that before the end of the war I should have many further opportunities to distinguish myself.The letters from my aunt and uncle moved me profoundly; their grief for the loss of their only son, and, even more, their shattered faith in him, was pathetic in the extreme, while it was easy to see how yearningly their hearts turned to me for comfort and consolation in their bitter bereavement. They were smarting with shame at the thought that it wastheirson, the lad of whom they had been so proud and upon whose future they had built such high hopes, who was the author of my undeserved disgrace and ruin, so far as my career in the British Navy was concerned; and they wanted me at home in order that they might have the comfort of doing what they could to make up to me for their son’s treachery. And in the plenitude of my affection I was, for the moment, more than half inclined to yield to their entreaties, resign my commission in the Japanese navy, and go home to them forthwith. But in the course of an hour or two calm reflection came to my aid; I would certainly return to England and endeavour to secure reinstatement in the navy of my own country, but not until after the war was over, if I lived so long. I had put my hand to the plough, and I would not turn back, although, of course, I knew that there were plenty of Japanese officers quite as good and useful as myself, and quite ready to step into my place, should I choose to vacate it. I came to the conclusion, however, that, let the authorities at home be ever so ready to remedy what had proved to be a miscarriage of justice, I should in nowise help my case with them by forsaking the cause which I had espoused, at the moment when the decisive events of the war were beginning, as we all then believed, to loom faintly upon the horizon. No, I told myself, if I wished for reinstatement—and I wished for nothing else half so ardently—I must remain until the issues of the war were decided, when I could go back home with a good grace, taking with me a fairly creditable record with which to back up my application. Meanwhile, I sat down and wrote a letter to my aunt and uncle, excusing myself for not at once acceding to their request to forthwith return to England, explaining the reasons which had urged me to that decision, and pouring out in a long, passionate declaration all the pent-up affection of my heart for them, and my sympathy with them in their bitter sorrow. I also wrote to Sir Robert Gordon, telling him that my aunt and uncle had expressed the desire that I should return to them forthwith, and reiterating the reasons which impelled me to decline.On the following day my signal was made from the flagship; and upon proceeding on board I was informed by the Admiral that General Oku’s report as to the assistance rendered by the ships during the battle of Nanshan, and especially of the important services which I personally had rendered on that particular day and those which immediately preceded it, had been particularly gratifying to him, and that it had afforded him the utmost satisfaction and pleasure to forward that report to Baron Yamamoto, the Minister of the Navy, with a covering letter from himself which he hoped would be of service to me. Meanwhile, I was instructed to proceed forthwith to Port Arthur with my ship, to assist in the blockading of the port.We filled our bunkers and replenished our stock of ammunition during the afternoon, and steamed out of Tashantau harbour, with all lights out, as soon as darkness fell, steaming dead slow all night, and keeping a sharp lookout for enemy ships, as a rumour had reached the Admiral that the Russians were planning another raid upon the Japanese coast by the Vladivostock fleet, which might be expected to put to sea at any moment. But we saw nothing, and arrived off Port Arthur at daybreak on the following morning without adventure of any kind. Here we fell in with the cruisers of the blockading fleet, to the admiral in command of which I forthwith reported myself, and delivered over the mail bags for the blockading ships, with which I had been entrusted. My instructions were to remain with the blockaders during the daytime, while at night theKasanumiwas to take part in the mine-laying operations in the roadstead of the beleaguered fortress, which were nightly conducted with untiring pertinacity. Shortly after my arrival, the destroyer flotilla which had been engaged in these operations during the night came steaming out, and among the approaching craft I recognised with pleasure theAkatsuki, still commanded by my former lieutenant and staunch friend, the enthusiastic Ito. That he had by no means forgotten me was quickly made manifest, for no sooner was he near enough to identify theKasanumithan his semaphore started work, signalling that he wished to communicate, and upon my signalman responding, his first question was whether I was still in command. Receiving a reply in the affirmative, he forthwith invited me to go on board his ship to take breakfast with him, and when I moved an amendment to the effect that the process should be reversed and that, instead, he should come and breakfast with me, upon the ground that, coming fresh from the rendezvous, my larder was probably better stocked than his, he at once joyously accepted the invitation, and a quarter of an hour later I had the very great pleasure of welcoming him on my own quarter-deck. The dear chap was just as enthusiastic, just as keen, just as full of life as ever, and seemed unfeignedly glad to see me. Of course we had a tremendous lot to say to each other, and I was most eager to learn what he had been doing since we parted company; but when he learned that I was fresh from Kinchau, and had actually assisted at the battle of the Nanshan Heights, he positively refused to say a single word about himself until I had given him a full, true, and particular account of all the happenings of that terrible yet glorious day. His enthusiasm and delight, as I endeavoured to describe the final irresistible rush of the Japanese up those heart-breaking, shot-swept slopes, were supreme; he seemed to literally swell with pride; and when I spoke of the thrilling Japanese cheer as his fellow-countrymen finally carried the last line of the Russian defences and routed the defenders, he leaped to his feet and repeated the shout of “Banzai!” again and again, while his eyes shone like stars, and tears of joy and pride rolled down his cheeks.It was some time before I could turn his mind away from the events of that strenuous day; and when at length I succeeded in doing so, and could get him to talk about himself, it appeared that, stirring though the events seemed to be which were nightly happening before Port Arthur, they were all flat, stale, and unprofitable, compared with such an event as the storming of the Nanshan Heights. And so, as a matter of fact, they were, as I soon discovered for myself; for the duty of our destroyer flotilla consisted simply in steaming inshore every night industriously laying mines in the roadstead and at the harbour’s mouth, which the Russians as industriously strove to remove next day. True, the sameness of this work was occasionally relieved by a more or less exciting episode, as when, for instance, the Russians would suddenly turn their searchlights upon us and all their batteries would open fire. Then we simply had to scuttle for our lives, for, of course, the shore batteries mounted very much heavier and longer range guns than any that a destroyer could carry; and there was no sense in attempting, as a general rule, to oppose our 12-pounders and 6-pounders to their 6-inch and 11-inch guns.Yet we by no means allowed the Russians to invariably have it all their own way. There were times when, under cover of the darkness, one or two of us would creep right into the harbour entrance and, getting so close under the cliff that it became impossible for the Russians to depress their heavy guns sufficiently to reach us, would boldly engage the forts with our quick-firers, and even with rifle-fire, picking off any gunners that were foolhardy enough to expose themselves, and not unfrequently dismounting or otherwise putting out of action a few of their lighter guns. It was the good fortune of theKasanumi, on one occasion, very shortly after our return, to strike one of the Russian 11-inch Canets, mounted in the fort between Golden Hill and the inner harbour, fair and square upon the muzzle and blow it clean off, with a shell from our 12-pounder; but such successes as these were of course very rare. These engagements between our destroyers and the Russian forts were immensely exciting, and afforded a most agreeable and welcome change from the monotony of mine-laying, for when we undertook such an adventure we never knew whether or not we should emerge from it scatheless. The operation of getting in close under the cliffs, undetected, was of course hazardous enough to make the attempt irresistibly fascinating; but it was the getting away again after the alarm had been given and all the enemy’s searchlights had been turned upon us, when the excitement reached its height; for, of course, the moment that we were far enough away from the shelter of the beetling cliffs to enable the Russians to train their big guns upon us, they would open fire upon us for all that they were worth, and then it became a case of dodging the shells. It was then that our ingenuity was taxed to the very utmost, twisting and turning hither and thither as we ran at full speed into the offing, always endeavouring to make a turn in the most unexpected direction possible at the precise moment when we anticipated that the guns were being brought to bear upon us. And that, on the whole, we were fairly successful was pretty conclusively evidenced by the small amount of damage which we sustained. Indeed, our most serious mishap about this time in those waters arose from a totally different cause. One of our officers, a certain Commander Oda, had invented a particularly deadly kind of mine, which the Japanese Government adopted, and which they named after the inventor. A few days after my return to the waters of Port Arthur, Oda himself was engaged upon the task of laying some of his mines in the outer roadstead, when one of them somehow exploded, killing the captain of the ship and eighteen men, and wounding Oda himself and seven others. Strangely enough, however, the ship herself was only very slightly damaged. Less fortunate were the Russians; for, only a day or two later, two of their gunboats, while engaged in the attempt to remove some of our mines, came in contact with them, and both craft immediately went to the bottom, taking most of their men with them.
The Japanese loss, incurred in the struggle for possession of the Nanshan Heights, amounted to over four thousand, killed and wounded. What the Russian loss in killed and wounded totalled up to I do not think we ever knew, excepting that, by the evidence of the captured trenches alone, it must have been tremendously heavy. Their material losses, however, amounted to sixty-eight guns, many of which were of 8-inch or 6-inch calibre, ten machine-guns, three searchlights, a dynamo, and a considerable quantity of ammunition and food; while the victory gave to the Japanese the complete command of the isthmus, by enabling General Nakamura to seize Linshiatun, and Fort Hoshangtao, in its immediate neighbourhood, thus opening the way to the occupation of Nan-kwang-ling and Dalny, and the advance of Oku’s army upon Port Arthur.
As soon as it became evident that fighting was over for the day—by which time it had become too dark for me to signal to our squadron in the offing—I made my way down the hillside to the spot where the headquarters staff was established and, seeking General Oku’s tent, entered and reported myself. The General received me very kindly and courteously, but I could see in a moment that he was tremendously busy, the tent being full of officers to whom he was rapidly issuing orders. Having therefore reported myself and received orders to remain in camp for the night, I withdrew and sought the hospitality of my hosts of the previous night, who accorded me a very warm and cordial welcome. But there was none of that joyousness, that exaltation of spirits that I had expected to see as a result of the brilliant victory which we had gained; our numbers were less than they had been on the previous night, the absentees were lying out under the stars, either dead or wounded, somewhere yonder upon those shot-scored, blood-drenched slopes of Nanshan, and the joy of victory was quenched in sorrow for the fallen. We snatched a hasty, almost silent meal, and then those of us who had not to go forth on duty rolled ourselves in our cloaks and sought the relief of sleep.
For my own part, I slept like a log, and only awoke when the bugles sounded the reveille. Our little party turned out, tubbed, took breakfast, and then, at the sound of the “assembly,” sallied forth to see what was to be the next item on the programme.
Strong ambulance parties had been busily engaged all through the night, collecting the wounded and bringing them in to the hospital tents, but that work was now practically finished, and the preparations for the disposal of the dead had not yet been begun. The still weary troops were falling in, under arms, and in the distance I recognised General Oku, surrounded by the members of his staff, already on the ground. The commanding officers were at their posts, the non-commissioned officers were busily engaged in seeing that the troops were all in order for inspection, and a few minutes later the roll call was being gone through. This done, the troops were put through a few simple evolutions which terminated in their being drawn up in close formation constituting three sides of a hollow square, with the men all facing inward. General Oku then summoned an aide-de-camp to his side, gave him a brief order, and the aide, saluting, turned away and glanced rapidly about him, finally making his way toward where I now stood alone, at no great distance.
He halted within about six paces of me, saluted, and said:
“The Commander-in-Chief desires your immediate presence, most honourable Captain. He stands yonder.”
“Right!” I said. “I will join him at once. Have you any idea what he wants me for?”
“I think I can guess,” replied my companion, as he fell into step beside me, “but I am sure that the General will prefer to make that known to you himself.”
I said no more, and a couple of minutes later we halted before the general staff, and Oku took and returned my salute. Then he shook hands with me with much cordiality, and requested me to take up a position alongside him, on his right hand. This done, he proceeded to make a little speech to the closely packed troops. Shorn of the rather strange—to Western ears—flowery phraseology peculiar to the Japanese, his speech ran somewhat as follows:
“Soldiers of the Second Japanese Army, I gladly seize the first available opportunity that presents itself to tender you, on behalf of our august Emperor and the people of Japan, my most heartfelt thanks for the glorious victory which, by your indomitable courage and self-sacrifice, you so nobly achieved yesterday. The difficulties which you were called upon to surmount were so stupendous and the valour of the enemy so great, that there was a moment when I almost became persuaded that the position which you were attacking was impregnable, and that all the courage and devotion which you had displayed had gone for nothing. Yet I could not quite bring myself to believe that soldiers of Japan would ever permit themselves to be beaten, under any circumstances, however adverse; I therefore called upon you again for one last, supreme effort, and the valour and devotion with which you responded to my call is attested by the victorious presence of our glorious flag upon the heights to-day.”
Here the General was interrupted by a soul-stirring shout of “Banzai!” from the exultant troops. The echoes of the shout had not died away among the surrounding hills before the serried masses of infantry were once more silent and motionless as statues, and Oku resumed:
“I am proud, your officers are proud, and I am sure that you yourselves are proud, of your glorious achievement. Yet we soldiers must not arrogate to ourselves the entire credit of so magnificent a victory. Without the assistance of the navy, that victory—I say it frankly—would have been impossible. The sailors therefore are entitled to an equal share of the glory which we yesterday reaped on the slopes of those terrible heights; and I rejoice that chance has afforded me so early an opportunity as this to tender my personal thanks, the thanks of my officers, and the thanks of every soldier in the ranks, to the navy, here represented by the noble and gallant Captain Swinburne.”
Here there were further shouts of “Banzai!” even more enthusiastic, if that were possible, than those which preceded them. The General raised his hand for silence, and presently proceeded:
“We are, however, indebted to Captain Swinburne, not only as representing the navy, but also in a purely personal form. All through the trying hours of yesterday he stood on the slopes of those heights, alone save for the companionship of a solitary signaller, exposed, during some part of the time, to the pitiless fire of the enemy, and in constant danger of being captured; and during the whole of that time he devoted himself unsparingly to the task of directing the fire of our ships to the spots where from time to time it was most urgently needed; crowning this great service by sending a communication to the commander of the 4th Division which enabled that officer to effect the diversion which resulted in our hard-won victory. I have, therefore, now in the presence of you all, the honour to tender to Captain Swinburne, on behalf of our august Emperor, thus publicly, heartfelt thanks for the inestimably valuable services which he yesterday rendered to the cause of Japan.”
So saying, General Oku turned to me and gave me a hearty handshake, an example which was immediately followed by the officers of the staff, while the troops put their caps upon their bayonets and waved them enthusiastically, yelling “Banzai!” until I am sure they must have felt as hoarse as crows.
This little ceremony over, I received the General’s permission to rejoin my ship as soon as he had penned a dispatch to Admiral Misamichi, who was in command of the squadron, and which he requested me to deliver. This dispatch I received about half an hour later, from Oku’s own hands, whereupon I bade him and the members of his staff farewell, wished them the best of luck in their further encounters with the enemy, and then hurried away to the little cove on the north side of the bay, which I had used on two or three previous occasions, and where I had a shrewd suspicion that I should find my boat awaiting me. I was not mistaken, and shortly after six bells in the forenoon watch I was aboard theTsukushi, handing over General Oku’s dispatch to the Admiral. The latter at once read it, and seemed much gratified at its contents, which, however, he did not communicate to me. But I shrewdly surmised that it was a letter of thanks for the services rendered by the squadron and an intimation that our presence was no longer needed. And, so far as the latter part of my assumption was concerned, I was doubtless right, for after a little chat, during which I briefly related my experiences of the previous day—learning in return that theChokaihad lost her commander and two men killed, with two lieutenants and five men wounded—I received instructions to return to my ship, as the squadron would presently proceed to rejoin Admiral Togo at his base. And an hour later we were all steaming out of the bay.
Two days after our arrival at the base, the destroyerKageroarrived with mails for the fleet, and, to my great surprise, she brought for me a letter from my Uncle Bob, as well as one from my chum, young Gordon, and another from Sir Robert.
Naturally, I first opened the letter from Uncle Bob, for not only was it the first letter which I had received from any of the family since my “disgrace,” but also the envelope was deeply edged with black, and my first fear was that it might contain the announcement of the death of dear Aunt Betsy. But upon extracting the contents of the envelope I was at once reassured, for I saw that it really consisted of two letters, one from Uncle Bob, and the other from my aunt. There had been a death in the family, however, that of Cousin Bob, the author of the trouble which had resulted in my dismissal from the British Navy. It appeared that while engaged in battle practice there had been a bad accident on board theTerrible, one of her quick-firers having burst, killing two men and wounding five others, one of the latter so seriously that he had subsequently died. That one was Bob; and when informed by the ship’s surgeon that he had but a few hours to live, he had sent for the chaplain and to him had made a full confession of his crime, declaring that he had been spurred to it by blind, unreasoning jealousy of me. The chaplain, horrified at what he heard, took down the confession in writing, and poor Bob had signed it after the chaplain had added, at the dying lad’s request, an expression of deep contrition for his misdeed and a prayer to me for forgiveness of the wrong which he had done me. The two letters were sad reading, for they had been penned by heart-broken people who had not only lost their only son, but had learned, at the very moment of their loss, that all their pride in him had been misplaced, and that he had been guilty of a deliberate, despicable, cruel crime. Their shame and sorrow were patent in every sentence of the letters, indeed they made no effort to conceal them, and they finished up by saying that, Bob being gone from them, and gone so tragically, they hoped I would forgive them for any hard thoughts they may have had of me, and would be a son to them in place of the one they had lost. They further begged that, my innocence now being established, I would lose no time in hastening home to them, to comfort them in their bitter bereavement, and to take steps to procure my reinstatement in the British Navy, which, they had been informed, might probably be accomplished without much difficulty under the circumstances.
The letter from Sir Robert Gordon was also chiefly in reference to Bob’s death, the particulars of which, and of his confession, he had learned from his son Ronald. He also was of opinion that, in view of Bob’s confession, it ought not to be very difficult to secure the cancellation of my expulsion, whenever I might choose to return to England. But he said no word suggesting that I should return at once; on the contrary, he offered his own and Lady Gordon’s very hearty congratulations upon the frequency with which my name had been mentioned in the papers as having been specially referred to by Togo in his dispatches, and they both expressed the hope that before the end of the war I should have many further opportunities to distinguish myself.
The letters from my aunt and uncle moved me profoundly; their grief for the loss of their only son, and, even more, their shattered faith in him, was pathetic in the extreme, while it was easy to see how yearningly their hearts turned to me for comfort and consolation in their bitter bereavement. They were smarting with shame at the thought that it wastheirson, the lad of whom they had been so proud and upon whose future they had built such high hopes, who was the author of my undeserved disgrace and ruin, so far as my career in the British Navy was concerned; and they wanted me at home in order that they might have the comfort of doing what they could to make up to me for their son’s treachery. And in the plenitude of my affection I was, for the moment, more than half inclined to yield to their entreaties, resign my commission in the Japanese navy, and go home to them forthwith. But in the course of an hour or two calm reflection came to my aid; I would certainly return to England and endeavour to secure reinstatement in the navy of my own country, but not until after the war was over, if I lived so long. I had put my hand to the plough, and I would not turn back, although, of course, I knew that there were plenty of Japanese officers quite as good and useful as myself, and quite ready to step into my place, should I choose to vacate it. I came to the conclusion, however, that, let the authorities at home be ever so ready to remedy what had proved to be a miscarriage of justice, I should in nowise help my case with them by forsaking the cause which I had espoused, at the moment when the decisive events of the war were beginning, as we all then believed, to loom faintly upon the horizon. No, I told myself, if I wished for reinstatement—and I wished for nothing else half so ardently—I must remain until the issues of the war were decided, when I could go back home with a good grace, taking with me a fairly creditable record with which to back up my application. Meanwhile, I sat down and wrote a letter to my aunt and uncle, excusing myself for not at once acceding to their request to forthwith return to England, explaining the reasons which had urged me to that decision, and pouring out in a long, passionate declaration all the pent-up affection of my heart for them, and my sympathy with them in their bitter sorrow. I also wrote to Sir Robert Gordon, telling him that my aunt and uncle had expressed the desire that I should return to them forthwith, and reiterating the reasons which impelled me to decline.
On the following day my signal was made from the flagship; and upon proceeding on board I was informed by the Admiral that General Oku’s report as to the assistance rendered by the ships during the battle of Nanshan, and especially of the important services which I personally had rendered on that particular day and those which immediately preceded it, had been particularly gratifying to him, and that it had afforded him the utmost satisfaction and pleasure to forward that report to Baron Yamamoto, the Minister of the Navy, with a covering letter from himself which he hoped would be of service to me. Meanwhile, I was instructed to proceed forthwith to Port Arthur with my ship, to assist in the blockading of the port.
We filled our bunkers and replenished our stock of ammunition during the afternoon, and steamed out of Tashantau harbour, with all lights out, as soon as darkness fell, steaming dead slow all night, and keeping a sharp lookout for enemy ships, as a rumour had reached the Admiral that the Russians were planning another raid upon the Japanese coast by the Vladivostock fleet, which might be expected to put to sea at any moment. But we saw nothing, and arrived off Port Arthur at daybreak on the following morning without adventure of any kind. Here we fell in with the cruisers of the blockading fleet, to the admiral in command of which I forthwith reported myself, and delivered over the mail bags for the blockading ships, with which I had been entrusted. My instructions were to remain with the blockaders during the daytime, while at night theKasanumiwas to take part in the mine-laying operations in the roadstead of the beleaguered fortress, which were nightly conducted with untiring pertinacity. Shortly after my arrival, the destroyer flotilla which had been engaged in these operations during the night came steaming out, and among the approaching craft I recognised with pleasure theAkatsuki, still commanded by my former lieutenant and staunch friend, the enthusiastic Ito. That he had by no means forgotten me was quickly made manifest, for no sooner was he near enough to identify theKasanumithan his semaphore started work, signalling that he wished to communicate, and upon my signalman responding, his first question was whether I was still in command. Receiving a reply in the affirmative, he forthwith invited me to go on board his ship to take breakfast with him, and when I moved an amendment to the effect that the process should be reversed and that, instead, he should come and breakfast with me, upon the ground that, coming fresh from the rendezvous, my larder was probably better stocked than his, he at once joyously accepted the invitation, and a quarter of an hour later I had the very great pleasure of welcoming him on my own quarter-deck. The dear chap was just as enthusiastic, just as keen, just as full of life as ever, and seemed unfeignedly glad to see me. Of course we had a tremendous lot to say to each other, and I was most eager to learn what he had been doing since we parted company; but when he learned that I was fresh from Kinchau, and had actually assisted at the battle of the Nanshan Heights, he positively refused to say a single word about himself until I had given him a full, true, and particular account of all the happenings of that terrible yet glorious day. His enthusiasm and delight, as I endeavoured to describe the final irresistible rush of the Japanese up those heart-breaking, shot-swept slopes, were supreme; he seemed to literally swell with pride; and when I spoke of the thrilling Japanese cheer as his fellow-countrymen finally carried the last line of the Russian defences and routed the defenders, he leaped to his feet and repeated the shout of “Banzai!” again and again, while his eyes shone like stars, and tears of joy and pride rolled down his cheeks.
It was some time before I could turn his mind away from the events of that strenuous day; and when at length I succeeded in doing so, and could get him to talk about himself, it appeared that, stirring though the events seemed to be which were nightly happening before Port Arthur, they were all flat, stale, and unprofitable, compared with such an event as the storming of the Nanshan Heights. And so, as a matter of fact, they were, as I soon discovered for myself; for the duty of our destroyer flotilla consisted simply in steaming inshore every night industriously laying mines in the roadstead and at the harbour’s mouth, which the Russians as industriously strove to remove next day. True, the sameness of this work was occasionally relieved by a more or less exciting episode, as when, for instance, the Russians would suddenly turn their searchlights upon us and all their batteries would open fire. Then we simply had to scuttle for our lives, for, of course, the shore batteries mounted very much heavier and longer range guns than any that a destroyer could carry; and there was no sense in attempting, as a general rule, to oppose our 12-pounders and 6-pounders to their 6-inch and 11-inch guns.
Yet we by no means allowed the Russians to invariably have it all their own way. There were times when, under cover of the darkness, one or two of us would creep right into the harbour entrance and, getting so close under the cliff that it became impossible for the Russians to depress their heavy guns sufficiently to reach us, would boldly engage the forts with our quick-firers, and even with rifle-fire, picking off any gunners that were foolhardy enough to expose themselves, and not unfrequently dismounting or otherwise putting out of action a few of their lighter guns. It was the good fortune of theKasanumi, on one occasion, very shortly after our return, to strike one of the Russian 11-inch Canets, mounted in the fort between Golden Hill and the inner harbour, fair and square upon the muzzle and blow it clean off, with a shell from our 12-pounder; but such successes as these were of course very rare. These engagements between our destroyers and the Russian forts were immensely exciting, and afforded a most agreeable and welcome change from the monotony of mine-laying, for when we undertook such an adventure we never knew whether or not we should emerge from it scatheless. The operation of getting in close under the cliffs, undetected, was of course hazardous enough to make the attempt irresistibly fascinating; but it was the getting away again after the alarm had been given and all the enemy’s searchlights had been turned upon us, when the excitement reached its height; for, of course, the moment that we were far enough away from the shelter of the beetling cliffs to enable the Russians to train their big guns upon us, they would open fire upon us for all that they were worth, and then it became a case of dodging the shells. It was then that our ingenuity was taxed to the very utmost, twisting and turning hither and thither as we ran at full speed into the offing, always endeavouring to make a turn in the most unexpected direction possible at the precise moment when we anticipated that the guns were being brought to bear upon us. And that, on the whole, we were fairly successful was pretty conclusively evidenced by the small amount of damage which we sustained. Indeed, our most serious mishap about this time in those waters arose from a totally different cause. One of our officers, a certain Commander Oda, had invented a particularly deadly kind of mine, which the Japanese Government adopted, and which they named after the inventor. A few days after my return to the waters of Port Arthur, Oda himself was engaged upon the task of laying some of his mines in the outer roadstead, when one of them somehow exploded, killing the captain of the ship and eighteen men, and wounding Oda himself and seven others. Strangely enough, however, the ship herself was only very slightly damaged. Less fortunate were the Russians; for, only a day or two later, two of their gunboats, while engaged in the attempt to remove some of our mines, came in contact with them, and both craft immediately went to the bottom, taking most of their men with them.
Chapter Sixteen.The floating Mine.It is a true saying, that “the pitcher which goes too often to the well gets broken at last;” and thus it came about with me, or rather with theKasanumi.As the days passed, we became aware of greatly increased activity on the part of the garrison of Port Arthur. Cruising in the offing during the daytime, well beyond the range of the Russian’s biggest guns, yet near enough at hand to make sure that our blockade of the port was effective, the sound of violent explosions came floating off to us all day long, telling us in unmistakable language that strenuous efforts were being made to clear the channel of the sunken steamers wherewith we had blocked it, at such heavy cost to ourselves. There could be but one reason for such tremendous activity: it was doubtless that the enemy had it in contemplation to send his fleet to sea, probably with the object of finding a more secure shelter in the port of Vladivostock, a surmise which was confirmed by our spies in Port Arthur.If still further confirmation of this intention were needed, it was to be found in the increased efforts which the Russians put forth to hamper our mine-laying operations in the roadstead; for about this time it became the practice of the enemy to send out a ship, sometimes two, or even three, to lie at anchor in the roads all night. The ship, or ships, always anchored well under the cover of the heaviest guns of the fortress, yet so far out that her, or their, own heavy guns completely commanded the waters of the roadstead, thus tremendously increasing the difficulty of sowing those waters with mines.Naturally, the presence of these ships in the roadstead offered an almost irresistible temptation to our destroyers to essay the task of sinking them, or at least putting them out of action; and this desire on our part was smiled upon by Togo, to put the case mildly, for information was now continually reaching us to the effect that the formidable Baltic fleet was being rapidly prepared for sea, and that its departure on its long voyage to the Far East was imminent; while Togo was naturally anxious that the Port Arthur fleet—and the Vladivostock fleet also, if possible—should be effectually disposed of before the arrival of so powerful a reinforcement in Japanese waters. Therefore, great as was the risk attending the attack of a powerfully armed ship at anchor under the cover of several formidable forts, and careful as our Admiral was, both of his ships and of his men, no attempt was made to discourage us of the torpedo flotilla when our desire to attack was made known; on the contrary, the desire was smiled upon, as I have said, and nothing more than a word of caution was given against the incurring of unnecessary risks.Perhaps I ought to explain precisely what I mean by saying that the desire of the commander of the torpedo flotilla to attack these ships was “smiled upon” by the Admiral. He had not only “smiled upon” but had given imperative orders that the torpedo fleet was to be employed upon every possible occasion for the harassing and discomfiture of the enemy; but hitherto the tactics employed had been for the destroyers and torpedo-boats to attack in numbers, a division or even two or three divisions being sent in at a time. It was due to my initiative that these tactics were now to be altered, and that attacks were now to be permitted by as few as two boats only. Up to now it had been our regular practice for a large number of craft to creep in toward the roadstead at a low speed until discovered by the enemy’s searchlights, and then dash in upon the foe at our utmost speed, through a hail of shells, discharge our torpedoes as we circled round our quarry, and then dash out again, trusting to our speed to carry us back into the zone of safety. Of course this plan had its advantages, inasmuch as that the more there were of us, the greater—in theory—the chance that some of us would score a hit. But against this there was the fact that during the final rush of the torpedo craft upon the enemy, the necessity to maintain our highest speed throughout the entire period of the attack involved forced draught, and consequently flaming funnels, which latter of course immediately attracted the attention of the enemy and nullified all our efforts to take him by surprise.Now, I had by this time gained a considerable amount of experience of torpedo warfare, and I had not failed to observe that in the majority of cases where our attacks had failed, the failure had been due to the above cause, combined with the fact that ten or a dozen craft ran a much greater risk of being picked up by the enemy’s searchlights than would one or two. It had therefore seemed to me that, taking everything into consideration, the prospects of successful attack by two craft—one to support and assist the other in case of need—were as good as those of a dozen craft, while the risk would be very much less, provided that the attack were made coolly and circumspectly in accordance with a plan which I had worked out. This plan was, in brief, to run for the harbour at normal speed until we were practically within effective range, and then, instead of dashing in at full speed, to stop our engines—the throb of which was loud enough to be heard at a considerable distance on a quiet night—and head directly for our quarry, discharging our torpedoes when the momentum or “way” of the boat had carried her as far as she would go, trusting to the subsequent confusion to enable us to escape unscathed. I had fully explained this view of mine to the Admiral, and had obtained his sanction to put my plan to the test. Accordingly, on a certain night toward the middle of June, after the Russians had been let severely alone for some forty-eight hours, theKasanumi, accompanied by theAkaisuki, my friend Ito’s ship, left the rest of the blockaders, with the object of putting my theory into practice.It was a splendid night for our purpose; there was a breathless calm, the water was smooth as oil, and although there was certainly a moon, she was in her last quarter, and did not rise until close upon one o’clock in the morning. Moreover, the sky was overcast by a great sheet of dappled cloud through which only a solitary star here and there peeped faintly; it was consequently dark enough to afford us a reasonable chance of getting within striking distance of our quarry undetected.When the Russians sent their ships out of harbour to lie all night in the roadstead, as they did pretty frequently now, it was their custom to get them out early in the afternoon, after their destroyers had carefully swept the anchorage in search of mines; and it was my hope that—we having left them alone for the preceding two days—they would by this time be getting suspicious of such unwonted inactivity on our part, and consequently would send out one, or perhaps even two ships, to guard against a possiblecoupon our part.Our mine-laying craft very rarely got to work before one or two o’clock in the morning, that being the hour when human vigilance is popularly supposed to be least active; I therefore planned to arrive in the roadstead about midnight, hoping that I should then catch the enemy off his guard, snatching a rest in preparation for the moment when our activities usually began.Now, the thing which we had most to fear was a long-distance searchlight established in a station on Golden Hill, at a height of some two hundred feet above the sea-level. This searchlight was generally turned on at dusk, and was kept unceasingly playing upon the anchorage and its adjacent waters all through the night. It commanded the entire roadstead, from a point three miles east of the harbour’s mouth, right round to the south and west as far as the Pinnacle Rock; and the difficulty was how to avoid being picked up by it before we had delivered our attack. But by this time I knew the seaward surroundings of Port Arthur almost by heart. I knew, for instance—and this was most important—that the searchlight station was placed so far back from the edge of the crumbling cliff that the water immediately at the foot of the latter, and for a distance of perhaps a hundred yards to seaward, could not be reached by the beam of the light, and was therefore enveloped in darkness, rendered all the deeper and more opaque by the dazzling brilliance of the light; and I also knew that along the outer edge of this patch of darkness there was a sufficient depth of water to float a destroyer, even at dead low water. My plan, therefore, was to make a wide sweep to seaward upon leaving the blockading squadron, gradually turning east and north, and thus eventually to get into Takhe Bay, some five miles east of Port Arthur anchorage, and from thence creep along the shore to the westward, keeping as close in as the depth of water would permit. There was only one difficulty about this, which was that at a certain point not far from where the searchlight station stood, there was a gap in the line of cliff where the ground sloped steeply down to the water’s edge for a short distance, and here of course the beam of the light had uninterrupted play right up to the beach; but I believed I could overcome this difficulty by simply watching my opportunity and slipping past the gap when the searchlight was not playing upon it.All went well with us until about seven bells in the first watch (half-past eleven o’clock) when a great bank of fog, for which those seas are notorious, came driving in from the south-west, and in a moment we were enveloped in a cloud so thick that, standing upon the bridge, I could scarcely distinguish our aftermost funnel, and could not see our taffrail at all. We were then about three miles from the shore, with the indentation of Takhe Bay straight ahead of us, and near enough the anchorage for a man on our signal yard to make out—before the fog enveloped us, of course—that there were two ships at anchor in the roadstead, one, a five-funnelled craft which I knew could only be theAskold, while the other, showing four funnels, I gathered from his description must be the armoured cruiserBayan. The searchlight had of course been in action ever since we had made the land, and as its beam swept slowly over the ships it had revealed enough of their details to enable us to easily identify them.It was most exasperating that the fog should have swept down upon us just when it did. Had it come an hour, or even half an hour, later, I would have welcomed it, for we should then have had time to get up within striking distance of the ships and, under cover of the fog, could have approached them closely enough to have made sure of both, while now! Well, it was useless to cry over what could not be helped; the only thing to do was to make the best of things as they were, and to hope that the fog might yet prove a friend in disguise, after all.Fortunately, as the fog came sweeping up to us, I had the presence of mind to hail the man on the yard—who was at that moment describing the ships he saw riding at anchor in the roads—asking him to tell me exactly how they bore from us. His reply was:“They are square abeam, honourable Captain.”I immediately put my head in through the window of the wheelhouse and demanded of the helmsman how we were at that moment heading. He answered that we were then steering north forty degrees west, by compass.“Then,” said I, “alter the course at once to west forty degrees south. That,” I added, addressing young Hiraoka, who was standing beside me, “ought to take us to them, or near enough to enable us to sight them. Kindly go aft, Mr Hiraoka, and hail theAkatsuki, telling her of our shift of helm.”The youngster ran aft to do my bidding, the fog at that moment being so thick that it was impossible to see one’s hand before one’s face, even the beam of the distant searchlight being so effectually obscured that it might have been extinguished for all that we knew to the contrary. I had rung down for our engines to stop, so that we might not run away from theAkatsuki, after shifting our helm, without informing her of the alteration in our course, and everything was now so still that I had no difficulty in distinguishing young Hiraoka’s hail, and the reply from the other destroyer, breaking through the soft swish and lap of water under our bows. It was theAkatsuki’slieutenant who was answering our hail, and he had just acknowledged the intimation of our altered course, and was ordering his own helmsman to make a like change, when, without the slightest warning, I experienced a terrific shock which felt exactly as though the ship had been smitten a savage blow from below by a giant hammer. So violent was it that I was flung high in the air and over the rail of the bridge on to the steel turtle-back deck beneath, upon which I landed head-first with such violence that I immediately lost consciousness. But before that happened I was sensible of two things; one of them being a blinding flash of flame, coincident with the shock, in which our bows, for a length of some ten or twelve feet, seemed to crumple up and fly to pieces, while the other was that, as I was tossed high in the air, I sustained a violent blow on the chest from some heavy object which seemed to sear my flesh like white-hot iron. Then down I came upon my head, and knew no more.My first sensation, upon coming to myself, was that of a violent aching all over my body, as though every bone in it had been broken. But the aching of my head was even worse than that of my body, while as for my chest, it smarted and throbbed as though the blade of a burning knife rested upon it. I next became aware that I was in bed; and finally, opening my eyes, I saw that I was the occupant of one of many beds in a large, airy room which somehow seemed familiar to me, and which I presently identified as the ward which I had once before occupied in the hospital at our base among the Elliot Islands.It was broad daylight, and the sun was shining brilliantly into the room through the widely opened windows, which admitted a gentle, refreshing breeze, pleasantly charged with ozone. Two dainty little women nurses were doing something at a table at the far end of the room, which happened to come within the range of my vision, and presently I heard the gentle splash of water in that direction, which immediately brought home to me the consciousness that my mouth and throat were parched. I opened my mouth to call to the nurses that I was thirsty, but it was only the very faintest of whispers that escaped my smarting lips. It was enough, however, to immediately produce a gentle rustle on the other side of my bed, and the next moment a pretty face was bending over me and a pair of soft, dark, almond-shaped eyes were gazing sympathetically into mine.“Ah!” exclaimed the owner of those eyes, “at last the illustrious Captain is himself again. Are you suffering very acutely, noble sir?”“Suffering?” I whispered. “Rather! I ache as if I had been beaten to a jelly, and I am as thirsty as a—as a limekiln. Can you by any chance get me something to drink? A bucketful will do to start with.”“A bucketful!” she murmured, looking anxiously down at me as she laid her long, slender, pointed fingers upon the pulse of my left hand where it rested outside the coverlet. “But no,” she continued, evidently speaking to herself, “his pulse is almost normal, and there is no trace of fever. A bucketful! Oh, these English!”She shook her head, as though giving up some problem that she found too difficult for solution, and shuffled off, with the curious gait peculiar to Japanese women, without saying another word to me. She approached the other two nurses, at the far end of the ward, and said something which caused them both to turn and stare in my direction. Then the senior of the party, accompanied by the girl whom I had so tremendously astonished, came up to my bedside, looked at me, felt my pulse, and shuffled away again, presently returning with one of those cups with a spout, from which one can drink while in a recumbent position. She placed the point of the spout between my lips, and the next moment I was aware that I was imbibing some delicious broth. But the cup! It was only about the size of an ordinary breakfast cup, and its contents were gone before I could well taste them. I asked for more, and got a second cupful; and then, as I was asking for still more, the Medical Staff of the hospital entered the ward, and the whole crowd turned with one accord and grouped itself around my bed.The Chief, a keen, clever-looking little fellow, whose age it was impossible to guess at since he was clean shaven, turned to the nurse who was feeding me, and sharply demanded what it was that she was administering. She explained, adding in all seriousness the information that I had demanded a bucketful, whereupon he turned and regarded me with upraised eyebrows, and laid his fingers upon my wrist.“So you are suffering from extreme thirst, Captain, eh?” he demanded.I nodded emphatically.“Ah!” he said, “yes; that was only to be expected. Well—” He turned to the head nurse and gave her certain instructions in so low a tone of voice that I could not catch what he said. Then, drawing a notebook from his pocket, he very carefully and with much consideration wrote what I imagined to be a prescription, tore out the leaf, and handed it to the nurse, with instructions to have it made up. Then, turning again to me, he inquired how I felt. I described my symptoms as well as I could, wondering all the while how it was that I was only able to speak in the merest whisper.The members of the staff, including the Head himself, could not have listened with more rapt attention, had I been communicating to them some item of intelligence of the most tremendous import; and when I had finished, the Head drew away from my bed to the far end of the room, where for some minutes he appeared to be delivering a lecture to the members of his staff, who had followed him. Then, the lecture being finished, they all came back to the side of my bed, and one of the nurses having carefully folded back the covering as low as my waist, the Head proceeded to deftly loosen the fastenings of an enormous bandage which I now discovered enveloped my chest. This done, I was very tenderly raised to a sitting posture—an operation which gave me excruciating pain, by the way—and the endless turns of the bandage were deftly unwound, one of the nurses seating herself upon the bed and supporting me meanwhile. When at length the bandage was removed, several broad strips of dressing were disclosed, which, upon removal, revealed a ghastly great jagged wound stretching right across my chest, the edges of which had been very neatly drawn together by a number of stitches. Then, for the first time, I remembered the violent blow on the chest which I had received when the bows of theKasanumiwere destroyed. The wound was intently examined by the entire staff, pronounced to be healing most satisfactorily, and then, after being thoroughly sponged with warm water, was re-dressed, and a fresh bandage applied. Meanwhile, I had made the discovery that my head also was enveloped in bandages, and when I asked why, was informed that I had received a scalp wound, which, however, was of no serious consequence. When this also had been re-dressed, the entire operation occupying the best part of half an hour, I felt considerably easier, although much exhausted. While the wound in my chest was being dressed, I had seized the opportunity to look round the ward, and saw that several of the beds were occupied, one of the patients, who appeared to be suffering from a broken arm, being a man whom I appeared to know. As I sat staring at him he turned his head and our eyes met, whereupon, to my amazement, up went his uninjured hand to the salute.“Who is that man?” I demanded. “I seem to recognise his face.”“You do?” remarked the Chief. “Ah! no wonder. He is one of the survivors of the disaster by which you so nearly lost your honourable life. He was one of the crew of theKasanumi.”“One of the crew of theKasanumi!” I repeated. “Of course; I remember now. How come he and I to be here?”“You were both, with the rest of the crew of your ship, rescued by theAkatsuki, which ship was happily at hand when the disaster occurred,” replied the Chief.“Ah, yes, the disaster!” I remarked. “Yes, I am beginning to remember all about it now. What was the nature of the disaster, doctor? Was that ever ascertained?”“According to your friend, Captain Ito, who brought you here, there is no doubt that your ship struck a mine,” was the reply. “Of course she went down, though not so quickly but that the entire crew were saved, together with most of their personal effects. There was time, indeed, to save most, if not all, of your belongings, Captain, and they are now here, awaiting your convalescence.”“Thank you,” I said. “And, pray, when did the disaster occur?”“Just a week ago, last night,” was the reply.“A week ago!” I exclaimed in consternation. “Then, have I lain here all that time, unconscious?”“You certainly have,” replied the Chief. “Now, however, that you are happily conscious once more, we must do our utmost to keep you so, and to assist your recovery. Therefore, no more conversation, if you please, until I give you permission. What you now have to do is to remain perfectly quiet and free from all excitement, pleasurable or otherwise. Rest, sleep, take such food and such medicines as I shall order for you, and recover strength as rapidly as possible. Then, when you are sufficiently well to receive visitors, I will permit a few of the many who are now eager to see you, to do so. No, not another word!”And therewith the little fellow and his staff turned away and proceeded to overhaul the rest of the patients.The nurse whom I had at first seen upon recovering consciousness appeared to have been specially told off to look after me, for upon the departure of the staff she came and knelt by my bedside, as is their fashion, instead of sitting.She was just within the range of my vision, as I lay, and I suppose I must have stared at her pretty intently for some time, for presently I saw her colour rising, which at once brought me to my bearings. Thinking to put her at her ease, I said to her:“Nurse, what is your name?”She coloured still more, and after regarding me steadfastly for a moment, answered:“My contemptible and insignificant name, illustrious Captain, is Peach-blossom.”“Peach-blossom!” I repeated. “And a very appropriate name, too, by Jove! See here, Peach-blossom. The Chief Surgeon seems to have forgotten that I said I was thirsty. Do you think you could find me something to drink? Two or three tumblers of cold water, now, eh? I have an idea that they would taste particularly good.”“I will speak to the Chief, noble Captain, and if he consents I will honourably let you have it,” she replied.The Chief evidently consented, and a few minutes later I was quenching my thirst with the most delicious draught I had ever tasted. It was only pure, cold water, but as I slowly imbibed it I told myself that at last I really understood the full meaning of the term, “nectar.”Well, there is no need for me to dwell at length upon my sojourn in the hospital. I was given to understand that I was making a splendid recovery, yet although I was brought back to the Elliot Islands and admitted to the hospital on the morning of 20th June, it was not until nearly three weeks had passed that I was permitted to receive visitors, the first of whom was that fine fellow Ito, to whom I owed my life.I shall not readily forget the little chap’s delight when, upon entering the ward, he discovered me sitting up in bed, reading, propped up by cushions and a bed-rest. He sprang forward, his eyes fairly snapping with pleasure and excitement, and seizing my welcoming hand, shook it with such energy that good little Peach-Blossom felt constrained to spring hastily to her feet and rescue me from his too strenuous demonstrations of joy. At her vigorous remonstrances, however, he dropped my hand as though it had burnt him and, sinking into a chair by my bedside, proceeded to apologise with almost abject contrition, and would not be comforted until I had assured him, not quite truthfully, I am afraid, that he had not hurt me. Then, in answer to my questions, he proceeded to tell me what he knew of the matter.It appeared that at the moment when the explosion occurred, theAkatsukiwas so close to theKasanumithat the two craft were all but touching each other, although, from theKasanumi’sbridge, where I was then standing, I could not see the other destroyer. It also appeared that at the moment when I ordered the course of theKasanumito be altered, theAkatsukiwas close astern of us, and broad on our port quarter, the consequence being that the shifting of our helm carried us so close athwart her bows that she all but touched us when crossing our stern. It was at this moment that the explosion occurred; and Ito, instantly divining what had happened, at once manoeuvred his craft in such a fashion as to lay her alongside the fast-sinkingKasanumi, so that the crew of the latter were able to transfer themselves directly from one ship to the other without using boats. Meanwhile, the helmsman and signalmen on theKasanumi’sbridge had seen me tossed over the rail by the force of the explosion, and, although themselves severely shaken, had instantly flung themselves down upon the turtle-back, where they found me lying bleeding and insensible. To pick me up and carry me aft was the next thing to be done, for they realised at once that their own ship was sinking, and they did it, transferring my senseless body to theAkatsukithe moment that she got alongside. I was at once taken below and temporarily patched-up, while the crew of theKasanumiwere being transferred, together with such of their belongings as they were able to save, my cabin steward with the utmost devotion concentrating all his efforts upon saving the most valuable of my belongings, regardless of the loss of his own.It was at first thought that possibly theKasanumimight be saved, and Ito did his utmost in that direction, working for more than half an hour upon the stricken craft. But the damage was too serious, and despite collision mats and pumps the craft continued to settle until at length, recognising that all efforts were useless, he ordered all hands aboard his own ship, and cast off, theKasanumifoundering almost before theAkatsukicould back off clear of her.Ito made no attempt to attack the ships in Port Arthur roads single-handed, but at once shaped a course for the Elliot Islands, running clear of the fog half an hour later. Arrived at our base, he lost no time in having me conveyed ashore to the hospital, where, as already recorded, I lay for a week in a state of alternating delirium and coma before I recovered my senses.The doctors assured me that I was making a splendid recovery; yet to myself my progress appeared to be horribly slow, and it was certainly not accelerated by the knowledge that while I was lying there helpless, big events were happening which had all the appearance of leading up to still bigger events in the near future. For instance, there was the second sortie of the Russian squadron from Vladivostock, in the middle of June, lasting over a fortnight, during which it inflicted great loss and damage upon the Japanese. It was a most risky thing to do, and must certainly have resulted in disaster had not poor, unhappy Admiral Kamimura been morally chained down, and prevented from taking effective measures against the raiders, by a stringent order that he was to hold the Strait of Korea at all costs. Yet, such is human inconsistency, notwithstanding the above stringent order, which bound the unfortunate admiral hand and foot, and effectually precluded his pursuit of the raiding ships, he was so severely blamed by “the man in the street” for the damage done that a mob actually attacked and wrecked his house! This, of course, was most unjust and cruel treatment of a thoroughly capable and zealous man who, hampered though he was, did all he could to bring the raiders to book, and indeed, but for a sudden change of weather at a critical moment, would probably have brought them to action and given them a severe punishing.Then, there was the abortive sortie of the Port Arthur fleet, three days after the destruction of theKasanumi. True, the ships were only at sea for about twenty-four hours, and did nothing, narrowly escaping capture only by Togo’s over-eagerness to engage them, thus discovering himself to the Russians in time to allow the latter to make good their retreat back to Port Arthur; but, all the same, I felt that I was losing much in not being present. To me it seemed that our plucky little Admiral had missed a splendid chance over this last event; for we did the enemy no perceptible damage, and only succeeded in driving him back to his lair. As a matter of fact the only injury sustained by the Russians was that which happened to the battleshipSevastopol, which struck one of our mines as she was returning to Port Arthur anchorage, and was only got into the harbour with the utmost difficulty.
It is a true saying, that “the pitcher which goes too often to the well gets broken at last;” and thus it came about with me, or rather with theKasanumi.
As the days passed, we became aware of greatly increased activity on the part of the garrison of Port Arthur. Cruising in the offing during the daytime, well beyond the range of the Russian’s biggest guns, yet near enough at hand to make sure that our blockade of the port was effective, the sound of violent explosions came floating off to us all day long, telling us in unmistakable language that strenuous efforts were being made to clear the channel of the sunken steamers wherewith we had blocked it, at such heavy cost to ourselves. There could be but one reason for such tremendous activity: it was doubtless that the enemy had it in contemplation to send his fleet to sea, probably with the object of finding a more secure shelter in the port of Vladivostock, a surmise which was confirmed by our spies in Port Arthur.
If still further confirmation of this intention were needed, it was to be found in the increased efforts which the Russians put forth to hamper our mine-laying operations in the roadstead; for about this time it became the practice of the enemy to send out a ship, sometimes two, or even three, to lie at anchor in the roads all night. The ship, or ships, always anchored well under the cover of the heaviest guns of the fortress, yet so far out that her, or their, own heavy guns completely commanded the waters of the roadstead, thus tremendously increasing the difficulty of sowing those waters with mines.
Naturally, the presence of these ships in the roadstead offered an almost irresistible temptation to our destroyers to essay the task of sinking them, or at least putting them out of action; and this desire on our part was smiled upon by Togo, to put the case mildly, for information was now continually reaching us to the effect that the formidable Baltic fleet was being rapidly prepared for sea, and that its departure on its long voyage to the Far East was imminent; while Togo was naturally anxious that the Port Arthur fleet—and the Vladivostock fleet also, if possible—should be effectually disposed of before the arrival of so powerful a reinforcement in Japanese waters. Therefore, great as was the risk attending the attack of a powerfully armed ship at anchor under the cover of several formidable forts, and careful as our Admiral was, both of his ships and of his men, no attempt was made to discourage us of the torpedo flotilla when our desire to attack was made known; on the contrary, the desire was smiled upon, as I have said, and nothing more than a word of caution was given against the incurring of unnecessary risks.
Perhaps I ought to explain precisely what I mean by saying that the desire of the commander of the torpedo flotilla to attack these ships was “smiled upon” by the Admiral. He had not only “smiled upon” but had given imperative orders that the torpedo fleet was to be employed upon every possible occasion for the harassing and discomfiture of the enemy; but hitherto the tactics employed had been for the destroyers and torpedo-boats to attack in numbers, a division or even two or three divisions being sent in at a time. It was due to my initiative that these tactics were now to be altered, and that attacks were now to be permitted by as few as two boats only. Up to now it had been our regular practice for a large number of craft to creep in toward the roadstead at a low speed until discovered by the enemy’s searchlights, and then dash in upon the foe at our utmost speed, through a hail of shells, discharge our torpedoes as we circled round our quarry, and then dash out again, trusting to our speed to carry us back into the zone of safety. Of course this plan had its advantages, inasmuch as that the more there were of us, the greater—in theory—the chance that some of us would score a hit. But against this there was the fact that during the final rush of the torpedo craft upon the enemy, the necessity to maintain our highest speed throughout the entire period of the attack involved forced draught, and consequently flaming funnels, which latter of course immediately attracted the attention of the enemy and nullified all our efforts to take him by surprise.
Now, I had by this time gained a considerable amount of experience of torpedo warfare, and I had not failed to observe that in the majority of cases where our attacks had failed, the failure had been due to the above cause, combined with the fact that ten or a dozen craft ran a much greater risk of being picked up by the enemy’s searchlights than would one or two. It had therefore seemed to me that, taking everything into consideration, the prospects of successful attack by two craft—one to support and assist the other in case of need—were as good as those of a dozen craft, while the risk would be very much less, provided that the attack were made coolly and circumspectly in accordance with a plan which I had worked out. This plan was, in brief, to run for the harbour at normal speed until we were practically within effective range, and then, instead of dashing in at full speed, to stop our engines—the throb of which was loud enough to be heard at a considerable distance on a quiet night—and head directly for our quarry, discharging our torpedoes when the momentum or “way” of the boat had carried her as far as she would go, trusting to the subsequent confusion to enable us to escape unscathed. I had fully explained this view of mine to the Admiral, and had obtained his sanction to put my plan to the test. Accordingly, on a certain night toward the middle of June, after the Russians had been let severely alone for some forty-eight hours, theKasanumi, accompanied by theAkaisuki, my friend Ito’s ship, left the rest of the blockaders, with the object of putting my theory into practice.
It was a splendid night for our purpose; there was a breathless calm, the water was smooth as oil, and although there was certainly a moon, she was in her last quarter, and did not rise until close upon one o’clock in the morning. Moreover, the sky was overcast by a great sheet of dappled cloud through which only a solitary star here and there peeped faintly; it was consequently dark enough to afford us a reasonable chance of getting within striking distance of our quarry undetected.
When the Russians sent their ships out of harbour to lie all night in the roadstead, as they did pretty frequently now, it was their custom to get them out early in the afternoon, after their destroyers had carefully swept the anchorage in search of mines; and it was my hope that—we having left them alone for the preceding two days—they would by this time be getting suspicious of such unwonted inactivity on our part, and consequently would send out one, or perhaps even two ships, to guard against a possiblecoupon our part.
Our mine-laying craft very rarely got to work before one or two o’clock in the morning, that being the hour when human vigilance is popularly supposed to be least active; I therefore planned to arrive in the roadstead about midnight, hoping that I should then catch the enemy off his guard, snatching a rest in preparation for the moment when our activities usually began.
Now, the thing which we had most to fear was a long-distance searchlight established in a station on Golden Hill, at a height of some two hundred feet above the sea-level. This searchlight was generally turned on at dusk, and was kept unceasingly playing upon the anchorage and its adjacent waters all through the night. It commanded the entire roadstead, from a point three miles east of the harbour’s mouth, right round to the south and west as far as the Pinnacle Rock; and the difficulty was how to avoid being picked up by it before we had delivered our attack. But by this time I knew the seaward surroundings of Port Arthur almost by heart. I knew, for instance—and this was most important—that the searchlight station was placed so far back from the edge of the crumbling cliff that the water immediately at the foot of the latter, and for a distance of perhaps a hundred yards to seaward, could not be reached by the beam of the light, and was therefore enveloped in darkness, rendered all the deeper and more opaque by the dazzling brilliance of the light; and I also knew that along the outer edge of this patch of darkness there was a sufficient depth of water to float a destroyer, even at dead low water. My plan, therefore, was to make a wide sweep to seaward upon leaving the blockading squadron, gradually turning east and north, and thus eventually to get into Takhe Bay, some five miles east of Port Arthur anchorage, and from thence creep along the shore to the westward, keeping as close in as the depth of water would permit. There was only one difficulty about this, which was that at a certain point not far from where the searchlight station stood, there was a gap in the line of cliff where the ground sloped steeply down to the water’s edge for a short distance, and here of course the beam of the light had uninterrupted play right up to the beach; but I believed I could overcome this difficulty by simply watching my opportunity and slipping past the gap when the searchlight was not playing upon it.
All went well with us until about seven bells in the first watch (half-past eleven o’clock) when a great bank of fog, for which those seas are notorious, came driving in from the south-west, and in a moment we were enveloped in a cloud so thick that, standing upon the bridge, I could scarcely distinguish our aftermost funnel, and could not see our taffrail at all. We were then about three miles from the shore, with the indentation of Takhe Bay straight ahead of us, and near enough the anchorage for a man on our signal yard to make out—before the fog enveloped us, of course—that there were two ships at anchor in the roadstead, one, a five-funnelled craft which I knew could only be theAskold, while the other, showing four funnels, I gathered from his description must be the armoured cruiserBayan. The searchlight had of course been in action ever since we had made the land, and as its beam swept slowly over the ships it had revealed enough of their details to enable us to easily identify them.
It was most exasperating that the fog should have swept down upon us just when it did. Had it come an hour, or even half an hour, later, I would have welcomed it, for we should then have had time to get up within striking distance of the ships and, under cover of the fog, could have approached them closely enough to have made sure of both, while now! Well, it was useless to cry over what could not be helped; the only thing to do was to make the best of things as they were, and to hope that the fog might yet prove a friend in disguise, after all.
Fortunately, as the fog came sweeping up to us, I had the presence of mind to hail the man on the yard—who was at that moment describing the ships he saw riding at anchor in the roads—asking him to tell me exactly how they bore from us. His reply was:
“They are square abeam, honourable Captain.”
I immediately put my head in through the window of the wheelhouse and demanded of the helmsman how we were at that moment heading. He answered that we were then steering north forty degrees west, by compass.
“Then,” said I, “alter the course at once to west forty degrees south. That,” I added, addressing young Hiraoka, who was standing beside me, “ought to take us to them, or near enough to enable us to sight them. Kindly go aft, Mr Hiraoka, and hail theAkatsuki, telling her of our shift of helm.”
The youngster ran aft to do my bidding, the fog at that moment being so thick that it was impossible to see one’s hand before one’s face, even the beam of the distant searchlight being so effectually obscured that it might have been extinguished for all that we knew to the contrary. I had rung down for our engines to stop, so that we might not run away from theAkatsuki, after shifting our helm, without informing her of the alteration in our course, and everything was now so still that I had no difficulty in distinguishing young Hiraoka’s hail, and the reply from the other destroyer, breaking through the soft swish and lap of water under our bows. It was theAkatsuki’slieutenant who was answering our hail, and he had just acknowledged the intimation of our altered course, and was ordering his own helmsman to make a like change, when, without the slightest warning, I experienced a terrific shock which felt exactly as though the ship had been smitten a savage blow from below by a giant hammer. So violent was it that I was flung high in the air and over the rail of the bridge on to the steel turtle-back deck beneath, upon which I landed head-first with such violence that I immediately lost consciousness. But before that happened I was sensible of two things; one of them being a blinding flash of flame, coincident with the shock, in which our bows, for a length of some ten or twelve feet, seemed to crumple up and fly to pieces, while the other was that, as I was tossed high in the air, I sustained a violent blow on the chest from some heavy object which seemed to sear my flesh like white-hot iron. Then down I came upon my head, and knew no more.
My first sensation, upon coming to myself, was that of a violent aching all over my body, as though every bone in it had been broken. But the aching of my head was even worse than that of my body, while as for my chest, it smarted and throbbed as though the blade of a burning knife rested upon it. I next became aware that I was in bed; and finally, opening my eyes, I saw that I was the occupant of one of many beds in a large, airy room which somehow seemed familiar to me, and which I presently identified as the ward which I had once before occupied in the hospital at our base among the Elliot Islands.
It was broad daylight, and the sun was shining brilliantly into the room through the widely opened windows, which admitted a gentle, refreshing breeze, pleasantly charged with ozone. Two dainty little women nurses were doing something at a table at the far end of the room, which happened to come within the range of my vision, and presently I heard the gentle splash of water in that direction, which immediately brought home to me the consciousness that my mouth and throat were parched. I opened my mouth to call to the nurses that I was thirsty, but it was only the very faintest of whispers that escaped my smarting lips. It was enough, however, to immediately produce a gentle rustle on the other side of my bed, and the next moment a pretty face was bending over me and a pair of soft, dark, almond-shaped eyes were gazing sympathetically into mine.
“Ah!” exclaimed the owner of those eyes, “at last the illustrious Captain is himself again. Are you suffering very acutely, noble sir?”
“Suffering?” I whispered. “Rather! I ache as if I had been beaten to a jelly, and I am as thirsty as a—as a limekiln. Can you by any chance get me something to drink? A bucketful will do to start with.”
“A bucketful!” she murmured, looking anxiously down at me as she laid her long, slender, pointed fingers upon the pulse of my left hand where it rested outside the coverlet. “But no,” she continued, evidently speaking to herself, “his pulse is almost normal, and there is no trace of fever. A bucketful! Oh, these English!”
She shook her head, as though giving up some problem that she found too difficult for solution, and shuffled off, with the curious gait peculiar to Japanese women, without saying another word to me. She approached the other two nurses, at the far end of the ward, and said something which caused them both to turn and stare in my direction. Then the senior of the party, accompanied by the girl whom I had so tremendously astonished, came up to my bedside, looked at me, felt my pulse, and shuffled away again, presently returning with one of those cups with a spout, from which one can drink while in a recumbent position. She placed the point of the spout between my lips, and the next moment I was aware that I was imbibing some delicious broth. But the cup! It was only about the size of an ordinary breakfast cup, and its contents were gone before I could well taste them. I asked for more, and got a second cupful; and then, as I was asking for still more, the Medical Staff of the hospital entered the ward, and the whole crowd turned with one accord and grouped itself around my bed.
The Chief, a keen, clever-looking little fellow, whose age it was impossible to guess at since he was clean shaven, turned to the nurse who was feeding me, and sharply demanded what it was that she was administering. She explained, adding in all seriousness the information that I had demanded a bucketful, whereupon he turned and regarded me with upraised eyebrows, and laid his fingers upon my wrist.
“So you are suffering from extreme thirst, Captain, eh?” he demanded.
I nodded emphatically.
“Ah!” he said, “yes; that was only to be expected. Well—” He turned to the head nurse and gave her certain instructions in so low a tone of voice that I could not catch what he said. Then, drawing a notebook from his pocket, he very carefully and with much consideration wrote what I imagined to be a prescription, tore out the leaf, and handed it to the nurse, with instructions to have it made up. Then, turning again to me, he inquired how I felt. I described my symptoms as well as I could, wondering all the while how it was that I was only able to speak in the merest whisper.
The members of the staff, including the Head himself, could not have listened with more rapt attention, had I been communicating to them some item of intelligence of the most tremendous import; and when I had finished, the Head drew away from my bed to the far end of the room, where for some minutes he appeared to be delivering a lecture to the members of his staff, who had followed him. Then, the lecture being finished, they all came back to the side of my bed, and one of the nurses having carefully folded back the covering as low as my waist, the Head proceeded to deftly loosen the fastenings of an enormous bandage which I now discovered enveloped my chest. This done, I was very tenderly raised to a sitting posture—an operation which gave me excruciating pain, by the way—and the endless turns of the bandage were deftly unwound, one of the nurses seating herself upon the bed and supporting me meanwhile. When at length the bandage was removed, several broad strips of dressing were disclosed, which, upon removal, revealed a ghastly great jagged wound stretching right across my chest, the edges of which had been very neatly drawn together by a number of stitches. Then, for the first time, I remembered the violent blow on the chest which I had received when the bows of theKasanumiwere destroyed. The wound was intently examined by the entire staff, pronounced to be healing most satisfactorily, and then, after being thoroughly sponged with warm water, was re-dressed, and a fresh bandage applied. Meanwhile, I had made the discovery that my head also was enveloped in bandages, and when I asked why, was informed that I had received a scalp wound, which, however, was of no serious consequence. When this also had been re-dressed, the entire operation occupying the best part of half an hour, I felt considerably easier, although much exhausted. While the wound in my chest was being dressed, I had seized the opportunity to look round the ward, and saw that several of the beds were occupied, one of the patients, who appeared to be suffering from a broken arm, being a man whom I appeared to know. As I sat staring at him he turned his head and our eyes met, whereupon, to my amazement, up went his uninjured hand to the salute.
“Who is that man?” I demanded. “I seem to recognise his face.”
“You do?” remarked the Chief. “Ah! no wonder. He is one of the survivors of the disaster by which you so nearly lost your honourable life. He was one of the crew of theKasanumi.”
“One of the crew of theKasanumi!” I repeated. “Of course; I remember now. How come he and I to be here?”
“You were both, with the rest of the crew of your ship, rescued by theAkatsuki, which ship was happily at hand when the disaster occurred,” replied the Chief.
“Ah, yes, the disaster!” I remarked. “Yes, I am beginning to remember all about it now. What was the nature of the disaster, doctor? Was that ever ascertained?”
“According to your friend, Captain Ito, who brought you here, there is no doubt that your ship struck a mine,” was the reply. “Of course she went down, though not so quickly but that the entire crew were saved, together with most of their personal effects. There was time, indeed, to save most, if not all, of your belongings, Captain, and they are now here, awaiting your convalescence.”
“Thank you,” I said. “And, pray, when did the disaster occur?”
“Just a week ago, last night,” was the reply.
“A week ago!” I exclaimed in consternation. “Then, have I lain here all that time, unconscious?”
“You certainly have,” replied the Chief. “Now, however, that you are happily conscious once more, we must do our utmost to keep you so, and to assist your recovery. Therefore, no more conversation, if you please, until I give you permission. What you now have to do is to remain perfectly quiet and free from all excitement, pleasurable or otherwise. Rest, sleep, take such food and such medicines as I shall order for you, and recover strength as rapidly as possible. Then, when you are sufficiently well to receive visitors, I will permit a few of the many who are now eager to see you, to do so. No, not another word!”
And therewith the little fellow and his staff turned away and proceeded to overhaul the rest of the patients.
The nurse whom I had at first seen upon recovering consciousness appeared to have been specially told off to look after me, for upon the departure of the staff she came and knelt by my bedside, as is their fashion, instead of sitting.
She was just within the range of my vision, as I lay, and I suppose I must have stared at her pretty intently for some time, for presently I saw her colour rising, which at once brought me to my bearings. Thinking to put her at her ease, I said to her:
“Nurse, what is your name?”
She coloured still more, and after regarding me steadfastly for a moment, answered:
“My contemptible and insignificant name, illustrious Captain, is Peach-blossom.”
“Peach-blossom!” I repeated. “And a very appropriate name, too, by Jove! See here, Peach-blossom. The Chief Surgeon seems to have forgotten that I said I was thirsty. Do you think you could find me something to drink? Two or three tumblers of cold water, now, eh? I have an idea that they would taste particularly good.”
“I will speak to the Chief, noble Captain, and if he consents I will honourably let you have it,” she replied.
The Chief evidently consented, and a few minutes later I was quenching my thirst with the most delicious draught I had ever tasted. It was only pure, cold water, but as I slowly imbibed it I told myself that at last I really understood the full meaning of the term, “nectar.”
Well, there is no need for me to dwell at length upon my sojourn in the hospital. I was given to understand that I was making a splendid recovery, yet although I was brought back to the Elliot Islands and admitted to the hospital on the morning of 20th June, it was not until nearly three weeks had passed that I was permitted to receive visitors, the first of whom was that fine fellow Ito, to whom I owed my life.
I shall not readily forget the little chap’s delight when, upon entering the ward, he discovered me sitting up in bed, reading, propped up by cushions and a bed-rest. He sprang forward, his eyes fairly snapping with pleasure and excitement, and seizing my welcoming hand, shook it with such energy that good little Peach-Blossom felt constrained to spring hastily to her feet and rescue me from his too strenuous demonstrations of joy. At her vigorous remonstrances, however, he dropped my hand as though it had burnt him and, sinking into a chair by my bedside, proceeded to apologise with almost abject contrition, and would not be comforted until I had assured him, not quite truthfully, I am afraid, that he had not hurt me. Then, in answer to my questions, he proceeded to tell me what he knew of the matter.
It appeared that at the moment when the explosion occurred, theAkatsukiwas so close to theKasanumithat the two craft were all but touching each other, although, from theKasanumi’sbridge, where I was then standing, I could not see the other destroyer. It also appeared that at the moment when I ordered the course of theKasanumito be altered, theAkatsukiwas close astern of us, and broad on our port quarter, the consequence being that the shifting of our helm carried us so close athwart her bows that she all but touched us when crossing our stern. It was at this moment that the explosion occurred; and Ito, instantly divining what had happened, at once manoeuvred his craft in such a fashion as to lay her alongside the fast-sinkingKasanumi, so that the crew of the latter were able to transfer themselves directly from one ship to the other without using boats. Meanwhile, the helmsman and signalmen on theKasanumi’sbridge had seen me tossed over the rail by the force of the explosion, and, although themselves severely shaken, had instantly flung themselves down upon the turtle-back, where they found me lying bleeding and insensible. To pick me up and carry me aft was the next thing to be done, for they realised at once that their own ship was sinking, and they did it, transferring my senseless body to theAkatsukithe moment that she got alongside. I was at once taken below and temporarily patched-up, while the crew of theKasanumiwere being transferred, together with such of their belongings as they were able to save, my cabin steward with the utmost devotion concentrating all his efforts upon saving the most valuable of my belongings, regardless of the loss of his own.
It was at first thought that possibly theKasanumimight be saved, and Ito did his utmost in that direction, working for more than half an hour upon the stricken craft. But the damage was too serious, and despite collision mats and pumps the craft continued to settle until at length, recognising that all efforts were useless, he ordered all hands aboard his own ship, and cast off, theKasanumifoundering almost before theAkatsukicould back off clear of her.
Ito made no attempt to attack the ships in Port Arthur roads single-handed, but at once shaped a course for the Elliot Islands, running clear of the fog half an hour later. Arrived at our base, he lost no time in having me conveyed ashore to the hospital, where, as already recorded, I lay for a week in a state of alternating delirium and coma before I recovered my senses.
The doctors assured me that I was making a splendid recovery; yet to myself my progress appeared to be horribly slow, and it was certainly not accelerated by the knowledge that while I was lying there helpless, big events were happening which had all the appearance of leading up to still bigger events in the near future. For instance, there was the second sortie of the Russian squadron from Vladivostock, in the middle of June, lasting over a fortnight, during which it inflicted great loss and damage upon the Japanese. It was a most risky thing to do, and must certainly have resulted in disaster had not poor, unhappy Admiral Kamimura been morally chained down, and prevented from taking effective measures against the raiders, by a stringent order that he was to hold the Strait of Korea at all costs. Yet, such is human inconsistency, notwithstanding the above stringent order, which bound the unfortunate admiral hand and foot, and effectually precluded his pursuit of the raiding ships, he was so severely blamed by “the man in the street” for the damage done that a mob actually attacked and wrecked his house! This, of course, was most unjust and cruel treatment of a thoroughly capable and zealous man who, hampered though he was, did all he could to bring the raiders to book, and indeed, but for a sudden change of weather at a critical moment, would probably have brought them to action and given them a severe punishing.
Then, there was the abortive sortie of the Port Arthur fleet, three days after the destruction of theKasanumi. True, the ships were only at sea for about twenty-four hours, and did nothing, narrowly escaping capture only by Togo’s over-eagerness to engage them, thus discovering himself to the Russians in time to allow the latter to make good their retreat back to Port Arthur; but, all the same, I felt that I was losing much in not being present. To me it seemed that our plucky little Admiral had missed a splendid chance over this last event; for we did the enemy no perceptible damage, and only succeeded in driving him back to his lair. As a matter of fact the only injury sustained by the Russians was that which happened to the battleshipSevastopol, which struck one of our mines as she was returning to Port Arthur anchorage, and was only got into the harbour with the utmost difficulty.