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 the Kasanumi.
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, the Kasanumi, accompanied by the Akaisuki, 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 possible coup on 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 the Askold, while the other, showing four funnels, I gathered from his description must be the armoured cruiser Bayan. 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 the Akatsuki, 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 the Akatsuki, 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 the Akatsuki’s lieutenant 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 the Kasanumi were 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 the Kasanumi.”
“One of the crew of the Kasanumi!” 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 the Akatsuki, 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, the Akatsuki was so close to the Kasanumi that the two craft were all but touching each other, although, from the Kasanumi’s bridge, 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 the Kasanumi to be altered, the Akatsuki was 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-sinking Kasanumi, 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 the Kasanumi’s bridge 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 the Akatsuki the moment that she got alongside. I was at once taken below and temporarily patched-up, while the crew of the Kasanumi were 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 the Kasanumi might 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, the Kasanumi foundering almost before the Akatsuki could 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 the Kasanumi. 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 battleship Sevastopol, 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.