ITO’S YARN.
We arrived at our rendezvous among the Hall Islands on the afternoon of May 3rd, and found the place practically deserted, those who were left behind reporting that Admiral Togo and the fleet had left for Port Arthur, the previous day, for the purpose of making a third attempt to seal up the Russian fleet in the harbour. I was by this time making excellent progress toward recovery, but the Idzumi’s surgeon considered that I should do still better in the hospital ashore; I was therefore landed within half an hour of the ship’s coming to an anchor, and that evening found me comfortably established in the roomy convalescent ward, in charge of an excellent and assiduous medical and nursing staff. The latter was composed of young Japanese women, than whom, I think it would be impossible to find more gentle, attentive and tender sick-room attendants. I don’t know whether they were more than usually kind to me because I happened to be a foreigner who was helping to fight Japan’s battles in her hour of need, but it appeared to me that they were vying with each other as to who should do the most for me. Had I been a king, they could not have done more for me than they did.
On the following morning, having been assisted to rise and dress by the two nurses whose especial charge I was, and established by them near an open window overlooking the roadstead, I was making play with a particularly appetising breakfast when, glancing out of the window, I saw a big fleet of transports arriving—there were eighty-three in all, for I had the curiosity to count them; and while they were coming to an anchor another 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 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 shot every one of them.
“We were by this time about a mile out at sea, when we suddenly caught sight of a torpedo-boat hove-to, without lights, and rolling and pitching furiously not far away. Feeling sure that she must be Japanese, I hailed her, got a reply, and five minutes later was following my crew up the side of Number 65, being warmly welcomed by my friend, Lieutenant Taira, who was in command.
“And now came a misfortune; for as I made a spring from our boat to the deck of the plunging Number 65, the sweeping ray of the Russian searchlight passed over us, returned, and rested inexorably upon us. Taira instantly gave the order to the engineers to go full speed ahead; but even before the engines could be started, a number of shells came hurtling about us, and one unfortunately passed through the boat’s thin side and, without exploding, cut the steam pipe of Number 3 boiler. Of course the stoke-hold was instantly filled with high-pressure steam, and before the stokers could escape, three of them were scalded to death. It was horrible to hear their screams and at the same time to realise the impossibility of doing anything to save them. Luckily for us, Number 75, lying at no great distance, saw that we were in difficulties, and pluckily came to our rescue, taking us in tow and, despite the tremendous fire directed upon us both, dragging us out of range.
“I was too busily engaged in helping to save Number 65 to see much of what further happened in connection with the attempt to ‘bottle up’ the Russian fleet; but I have since learned that the Sagami Maru, which followed the Otaru Maru, was peculiarly unfortunate, in that she struck a mechanical mine, just outside the harbour, and went down with all hands. The last ship, the Asagao Maru, was scarcely less unfortunate; for a shell struck her rudder as she neared the harbour, and rendered her unmanageable, so that she went ashore close under Golden Hill, and her crew, refusing to surrender, were killed, to a man.
“Just after this last happening, a fog came driving in from seaward and swallowed us all up, so that the Russians lost sight of us; and then the firing ceased. Shortly afterwards, our fast cruisers came looming up through the fog, to cover our retreat; and about nine o’clock in the morning Togo himself joined us with the battle squadron. He was most anxious to know the result of the night’s operations; but, unfortunately, none of us could afford him more than mere disconnected snatches of information. I think I possessed more information than anybody else; but of course mine was by no means complete, and the Admiral was most anxious to know exactly how matters stood, for great things hinged upon the measure of our success; I therefore offered to take in a picket boat and attempt to obtain all the information required, and my offer was accepted. I steamed in under cover of the fog, which was so thick that it was impossible for us to see more than a few yards in any direction; so thick, indeed, that we actually found ourselves among the masts of the sunken craft before we really knew where we were. There were two or three shore boats groping about the wreckage already, but they took no notice of us, imagining, perhaps, that we belonged to one of their own ships; and we were therefore able to complete our examination and to definitely satisfy ourselves that at last the harbour was entirely blocked. Learning this, the Admiral wirelessed a message to General Oku, informing him that he could safely move, since the Russian ships were now effectually bottled up; and the result of that message is the fleet of transports that you see yonder. And now, my dear chap, I must be off; the doctor told me that I must on no account weary you by talking too much; and here have I been yarning for the last half-hour or more. Good-bye! Hope to see you about again soon.”
“Here, stop a moment, old chap,” I cried. “Having told me so much, you may as well tell me the rest. Where is Oku going?”
“Ah!” answered Ito. “That is a secret. But I think many of us could make a good guess, eh?”
“If I were asked to guess, I should say, Pi-tse-wo,” answered I.
“And very probably, my dear Swinburne, you would be honourably correct,” answered Ito, as he waved his hand and smilingly bowed himself out.
A little later I was honoured by a visit from Togo himself, with whom I believed myself to be something of a favourite, although Togo’s favouritism never took the form of sparing the favoured one, or giving him easy work to execute; on the contrary, the most infallible sign that a man was in the Admiral’s favour was the assignment to him of some exceptionally difficult, arduous, or dangerous task. He had, of course, already heard of my adventure from Kamimura, but he wanted to hear the story from my own lips, and he also had several questions to ask me. He remained with me nearly an hour, and was most friendly and kind in his manner, expressing regret at my sufferings—such as they were—and the hope that I should soon be well enough to resume duty.
To my surprise, the Admiral called again, somewhat late in the afternoon. He was very busy, he said, being engaged on the task of arranging for the convoy of General Oku’s Second Army, consisting of 70,000 men, the task of whom was to assist in the reduction of Port Arthur. He expected to be away a full week, at least, possibly longer, and the object of his visit was to explain to me that, aboard the transports in harbour were all the materials for the construction of a great “boom,” eight miles long, to be carried from the island of Kwang-lung-tau, the most westerly of the Elliot group, to the mainland. Similar booms had already been run from island to island of the group, and the new, big boom would render the rendezvous immune to attack from the land to the northward. His object in looking me up, now, was in connection with the construction of this new, big boom. It appeared that, after leaving me that morning, he had encountered the physician who had charge of the hospital, and that official had expressed the opinion that, in the course of the next three or four days, I might probably be sufficiently recovered to be discharged from the hospital, and be employed upon light duties, such as those of superintendence, or anything which did not involve personal exertion.
That remark had suggested an idea to Togo, the result of which was his second call upon me, to inquire whether I knew anything about the construction of protective booms. As it happened, I did, having once been actively employed upon the construction of an experimental boom which was afterward stretched across the mouth of Portsmouth harbour. When, therefore, I told the Admiral this, with his usual directness of purpose he at once appointed me to superintend the construction of the long boom; his orders being that I was to remain in hospital until the doctors should discharge me; when I was to resume the command of the Kasanumi, and with her as flagship, proceed to the Elliot Islands, in charge of the torpedo flotilla which he would leave behind for that purpose, escorting the steamers into which he would tranship all the materials necessary for the construction of the long boom. And upon our arrival there, I was to discharge the steamers—or, rather, supervise the discharge of them, landing the materials at the most suitable spot I could find; and then, still supervising only, proceed with all celerity upon the construction of the boom. He briefly gave me his own ideas as to how the boom should be constructed, but left me with an entirely free hand to introduce any improvements that might suggest themselves to me, so far as the materials at my command would permit. The task was one that strongly appealed to me, for it gave some scope for the employment of a certain inventive faculty which I believed I possessed; and I undertook it with avidity.
That evening, about half an hour before sunset, the transhipment of the materials for the boom having been effected, the transports containing Oku’s Second Army got their anchors and started for Pi-tse-wo, escorted by a portion of the fleet under Togo, while the remaining portion, consisting of the light, fast cruisers and a detachment of destroyers, proceeded to Port Arthur, to make assurance doubly sure by keeping an eye upon the Russian ships there. I subsequently learned that the latter appeared to be quite inactive, although the sounds of frequent loud explosions proceeding from the harbour indicated that the Russians were already busily engaged upon the task of attempting to blast a passage through the obstructing wrecks.