Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun

Totomi went down; and then they had other fish to honourably fry, as you English say; for the Aikoku Maru was now racing in toward the harbour’s mouth, and it was high time for them to attend to her. They turned the searchlight upon her, opened fire upon her with every weapon that would hurl a shot, and presently, when she was within about a thousand yards of the entrance, they fired an observation mine as she passed over it, and down she went, taking her engine-room and stoke-hold crew with her.

“Then there ensued a ‘spell’—as you, my dear Swinburne, honourably call it—an interlude; possibly it was the end, for there were no more ships in sight; the firing died down, the searchlight beam stared steadily out to seaward, and we who had survived that saturnalia of slaughter had an opportunity to slip out and rejoin the torpedo-boats which were lurking close in under the shadow of the cliffs, waiting to pick us up.

“Honda commanded the leading boat in which our party were making their escape, and I the other. We were both creeping along as close as possible to the foot of the cliffs under Golden Hill, in order to elude the notice of the Russians above; and Honda, with fourteen men, was about a quarter of a mile ahead. I had eleven men with me.

“We had arrived at a point which I believed to be, rightly as the event proved, immediately beneath the fort, and I was staring contemplatively up at the face of the cliff which towered above us, when we came abreast of a sort of cleft in the rock, at the foot of which lay several big boulders in a great pile, some of which were in the water. Suddenly, the idea occurred to me that it might be possible for active men to climb that cleft; and acting upon the impulse of the moment, I put the boat’s helm hard a-starboard and, giving the word ‘Easy all!’ headed in toward the boulders.

“A minute later, we found ourselves in a miniature harbour, just large enough to receive the boat, the big boulders forming a sort of breakwater.

“‘Men,’ I said, ‘have all of you your revolvers and cutlasses with you?’

“They answered that they had. ‘Then,’ said I, ‘let us give those Russians, up above, a little surprise. I believe we can climb that cleft, and I, for one, am determined to try. Who goes with me?’

“As I had quite anticipated, they all agreed to join me in the attempt; so, making fast the boat’s painter to a rock, and leaving her to take care of herself, we scrambled out, and I honourably taking the lead, as was my right, up we went. It was a very difficult climb, in the semi-darkness, for the moon was hidden by clouds, and the way was so steep that we were obliged to push and pull each other up; but at length we reached the top, and then lay down in a little hollow to recover our breath.

“The fort crowned the summit of a steep hill immediately in front of us. For fully five minutes I patiently examined it, and at the end of that time came to the conclusion that only by the rear could we hope to approach it undiscovered. Accordingly, I led my men round to the land side of the fort and, taking our time, that we might save our breath, we crept slowly up the slope until we reached not only the summit of the hill but actually the parapet of the fort itself. Peering over this, I was able to see that it was armed with eight 11-inch Canet guns; and there were, including the gun crews, at least a hundred men in the place, all of them intently staring out to seaward, evidently in momentary expectation of seeing more explosion ships arrive.

“Had it been possible for us to have entered that fort at that moment, I would have led my men in, and we would have honourably died for the glory of Nippon, destroying as many of the enemy as we could before ‘going out’ ourselves. But entry, at least swiftly enough to take the Russians by surprise, was not possible, the parapet being protected by substantial chevaux de brise which we could neither have surmounted nor broken down without attracting attention; I was therefore obliged to content myself with giving them what you call a ‘scare.’ Ranging my men in open order along the rear parapet, so that only their heads and their levelled revolvers could be seen, I loudly called upon the Russians to surrender!

“My dear Swinburne, it was worth all the toil of that climb up the cliff, and up the steep slope of the hill, to behold the blank dismay of those Russians. It did not last long, though; to give them the credit due to them, they were brave fellows, and the moment they realised the situation, they simply laughed at us, regarding our exploit as a joke—as indeed it was, more than anything else.

“But the joke had its grim side, too; for the commandant immediately ordered his men to cover us with their rifles, and then ordered us to surrender.

“‘How are you going to take us?’ I asked.

“‘Throw your revolvers over here to me,’ he ordered; ‘and I will send out some men to conduct you to the town.’

“‘No,’ I said.

“‘If you do not, I shall be compelled to shoot,’ he said.

“‘Then, shoot, and be hanged to you,’ I replied; and giving a sign to my men, we opened fire with our revolvers at the same moment that the Russians blazed away at us with their rifles. And not until every chamber of our revolvers was empty did we turn and race down that hill toward the head of the cleft by which we had ascended.”

“Did you suffer any loss?” I asked.

“None at all,” was the cheerful answer. “The bullets hummed about our ears like mosquitoes in the summer- time, but not one of us was even touched. On the other hand, I saw several Russians fall before our fire, and I think that at least thirty of them must have gone down before we turned and honourably ‘hooked it,’ as you would say.”

I smiled. Good old Ito! He was a splendid fellow, honest as the day, utterly unassuming, brave as a lion, everything in short that a shipmate should be; but it was evident that the habit of introducing that favourite expression “honourable” in conjunction with a bit of British slang, was inveterate with him, and I felt that it would be a long time before he would be able to recognise its incongruity.

“Well,” I said. “What happened next?”

“Oh, nothing, so far as we were concerned,” he replied. “We scrambled down the cleft into our boat and pushed off, still keeping quite close to the foot of the cliffs, although there was a heavy sea rolling in and breaking upon them. And indeed it was high time for us to be off, for when we pulled out of our little harbour at the base of the cliff, the first light of dawn was showing along the horizon to the eastward.

“Suddenly, the cannonading, which had completely died away, broke out furiously again from the heights above, and from the new batteries which have been built on the low ground higher up the harbour. At first we thought we had been seen, and that they were firing at us; but presently a steamer hove in sight to seaward, and we saw that the firing was directed at her and three others which followed her. These we presently recognised as the remaining explosion steamers, which had lost their way in the fog of the night before.

“On they came, rushing toward the harbour at top speed, with a hurricane of shells of all sizes falling upon and about them, and the full glare of the searchlights shining full upon them.

“The first of them to come I recognised as the Edo Maru, under the command of Commander Takayagi. She looked frightfully battered as she swept past us, yet she kept afloat and reached the spot for which she was aiming. Her engines stopped and reversed, and she was evidently preparing to anchor, when a shell struck poor Takayagi, who was standing on the port extremity of the bridge, and, almost cutting him in two, hit the funnel, and exploding blew a tremendous hole in it. Nagata—you know Lieutenant Nagata, I think—the second in command, who was also on the bridge, immediately took charge, anchored the ship, exploded the charges down in her hold, and, ordering away the boats, left her, just as she was sinking, the crew bringing away poor Takayagi’s body with them. He is to be buried ashore here, this afternoon, with full military honours, of course.

“The next steamer to come was the Otaru Maru. I think the fire directed upon her was even hotter than that which greeted the Edo. Shells fell all round her, but none of them seemed to hit her; and meanwhile she was replying briskly with her Hotchkisses. The din was terrific, for every battery that could bring a gun to bear was blazing away at her, while troops made their appearance on the cliffs above and rained bullets upon her deck; indeed a sort of panic seemed to have seized the Russians, for not only were they hurling hundreds of shells at the devoted Otaru, but were exploding observation mines everywhere, in the most reckless manner. But their most deadly weapon of all was their searchlight beam, which they directed right into the eyes of the helmsman and the officers on the bridge. Dazzled by its blinding brilliance, our people could not see where they were going; and instead of reaching her appointed station in the harbour, the Otaru dashed at full speed upon the rocks. The crew, of course, took to the boats, but they were unfortunately in the full glare of the searchlight, and the Russian troops