Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun

fleet appeared, consisting of the warships which had been to Port Arthur to assist in the attempt to seal up the harbour. So interested was I in these arrivals that, in watching them, I allowed my breakfast to go cold, and nothing would satisfy my nurses but that they must get me another breakfast, which they did.

I had scarcely finished my belated meal and been attended to by the surgeon, when the door of the ward was thrown open, and in rushed my former lieutenant, Ito, now captain of the destroyer Akatsuki. He had volunteered for service on the 2nd, it appeared, and upon his return had encountered the Idzumi’s Number 1, who had related to Ito my adventure aboard the junk, and the good fellow had straightway come to the hospital to see me “and pay his respects.” Also, I shrewdly suspected, to spin me the yarn of his own adventures. But he insisted upon hearing my story first; and when I had told it, in the fewest words possible, he told me his own, which, stripped of his somewhat peculiar modes of expression, ran somewhat as follows:

“Two days ago,” he began, “the news reached here that our soldiers had crossed the river Yalu; and thereupon the Admiral made up his mind that the moment had arrived for a further attempt to be made to seal up the Russian fleet in Port Arthur harbour.

“As you are aware, Togo has for some time been quietly making preparations for this attempt, the twelve steamers that have been lying at anchor here having been provided especially for that purpose. You know also that of those twelve, eight have been prepared in the usual manner, by placing heavy charges of gun-cotton in their bottoms, connected with the bridge by electric wires, so that the officer in command might be able to explode the charges and sink his ship at the proper moment, while, on top of these charges, the hull of the ship was converted into a solid rock-like mass by filling her with concrete made of stone, old railway metals and other iron, and cement. Five of the ships were also fitted with searchlights, so that we might not again have to contend with the difficulty of finding the harbour entrance.

“Commander Hayashi, whom I believe you know, was appointed to command the expedition; and volunteers were called for in the usual way. Of course I offered myself; and Togo was good enough to appoint me to the Totomi Maru, a small craft of some nineteen hundred tons, under a splendid fellow named Honda.

“We left here at noon of the 2nd, escorted by the gunboats Akagi and Chokai, the second, third, fourth, and fifth destroyer divisions, and the ninth, tenth, and fourteenth torpedo-boat flotillas.

“When we started, the weather was everything that could be desired; there was no wind, and the water was like glass, while, for a wonder, the air was crystal clear; also there would be a good slice of moon to light us on our way after sunset. But the weather was too fine to last; you know how it is in these seas, my dear chap. Toward sunset the barometer began to fall very rapidly, and about eight o’clock a fresh south-easterly breeze sprang up quite suddenly; it became hazy, the sea got up rapidly, and by six bells in the first watch it was blowing hard, and the weather became so thick that we lost sight of each other. I heard to-day that Hayashi, seeing what was coming, made the signal to postpone the attempt; but we never saw the signal, and went on, rolling and plunging through the short, choppy seas in the most uncomfortable manner.

“It appears that the alarm was first given to the Russians, about two o’clock next morning, by the appearance of what looked like a searchlight, far out at sea, directed full upon the mouth of the harbour. Of course the searchlight on Golden Hill was at once brought into play, and it chanced that as the beam swept the sea, five of our torpedo-boats were sighted, attempting to slip into the harbour. It was a thousand pities that they were prematurely discovered, for their skippers had formed a bold plan to enter the harbour and torpedo every ship they could find, taking their chance of being able to get away afterward. But of course their discovery frustrated that plan, for so hot a fire was opened upon them by three Russian gunboats which were guarding the harbour’s mouth, that to have persisted would have meant their destruction. So they were obliged to retire; for the Admiral would not have thanked them for throwing away their boats uselessly.

“Then the searchlight picked up the Mikawa Maru, which was leading three other explosion ships straight for the harbour, and a terrific fire was opened upon her, the Russians evidently recognising her as a merchant ship, and guessing at her business. From Sosa’s report it appears that, having seen the flashes of the guns, firing upon our torpedo-boats, he was under the impression that certain of the explosion ships had already entered the harbour and were being fired upon by the Russians; but, as he drew nearer in, his searchlight revealed his mistake, showing him that instead of being one of the last, he was the first to arrive; therefore he called down into the engine-room for every ounce of steam they could give him, and went, full pelt, for the harbour, through a perfect tornado of projectiles, great and small, few of which, however, touched the ship, though they were lashing the sea into spray all round her.

“Without sustaining any serious damage, the Mikawa charged right into the narrow channel at top speed. At this point she came into violent collision with something that afterward proved to be a ‘boom,’ constructed of stout balks of timber, steel hawsers, and ponderous chain cables, all strongly lashed together and stretched right athwart the channel, from shore to shore. But she was of nearly two thousand tons measurement, and, with the way that she had on her, she went through that boom as though it had been a thread! On she went, until not only the searchlight but also Golden Hill fort was on her starboard quarter, and she had penetrated farther than any other Japanese ship had done since war was declared, when, having reached the point where the channel is narrowest, Sosa, her skipper, swung her athwart the fairway and, amid the cheers of his crew and the deafening explosions of guns and shells, coolly blew her bottom out and sank her, he and his crew just having time to scramble into their two boats as the steamer foundered. Wasn’t that fine?”

“Splendid!” I agreed, heartily. “And what became of that fine chap, Sosa, and his crew? Did they manage to escape?”

“Sosa and three men of his boat’s crew contrived, although they were all wounded, to pull out to our torpedo-boats, and were picked up,” replied Ito. “But the Russians fired upon the other boat and destroyed her and her crew, despite Sosa’s desperate efforts to save them.

“The next ship to arrive was the Sakura Maru. She was about a mile and a half ahead of us in the Totomi, and we were able to see everything that happened to her.

“I believe it was her opportune arrival that gave the gallant Sosa and his companions the chance to escape; because of course as soon as the Sakura was seen, the Russian gunners gave all their attention to her.

“It was a grand sight to see her—she was more than a thousand tons bigger than the Mikawa—rushing straight for the harbour’s mouth at her utmost speed, with the water foaming about her bows, a thin stream of smoke and sparks issuing from her funnels, her whole hull, spars, rigging, and funnels standing up, a black silhouette, between us and the white beam of the searchlight, with shells exploding all about her, deluging her with foam, but apparently doing her no harm. She stood on, evidently under a full head of steam, for we could see ‘the white feather’ at the top of her waste-pipes, until she reached the Pinnacle Rock; and there they anchored and sank her. She was manned almost entirely by cadets; and as an illustration of the consummate coolness with which they behaved, let me tell you that when the ship went down, they actually had the presence of mind to take flares aloft with them, which they burnt from the crosstrees, to guide us into the channel!

“Of course the Russians fired upon them, and shot away first one mast and then the other. Then they were called upon to surrender, some of the Russians actually launching boats to take them off the floating wreckage; but the cadets were imbued with the true Samurai spirit, they preferred death to surrender, and they defended themselves with their revolvers from all who approached them, until every Japanese was slain.

“Then came the turn of the Totomi Maru, we being the third ship to arrive. Well, I have not much to say about what we did, or what happened to us; it would be merely a repetition of what I have already described. Like our predecessors, we went in at full speed, struck some floating object two terrific blows just as we entered the channel, swept on, amid a hurricane of shells and bullets shrieking and whining about our ears, until we came to the wreck of the Mikawa, and there Honda—who is about as cool a chap under fire as you are—stopped and reversed his engines, swung the ship athwart the channel, with our bows as close as we could guess to the Mikawa’s taffrail, let go two anchors, one ahead and one aft, and calmly sank the craft.

“The Russians kept their searchlight upon us, and peppered us well with rifle-fire, until the