CHAPTER XXVI. "THE DESTINY OF AN EMPIRE."
On the morning of the twenty-seventh of May a light fog hung over the Yellow Sea and the Straits of Korea. Gulls sailed in leisurely fashion above the dull-green surface of the water, or dropped with sudden scream as their keen eyes discerned some floating scrap of food; but the supply was scarce, for few ships had of late passed that way, and the sea, ordinarily alive with junks and steamers and modern sailing craft, was as deserted as some far-off Polar bay which no adventurer's keel had yet ploughed.
The gulls seemed uneasy, in spite of the desolateness of the broad expanse of heaving swell. They called to each other with warning cries as if some hidden danger were near. What lay concealed beneath those fleecy folds of mist, which already began to mellow to golden in the rays of the rising sun, and to drift southward before the light breeze which was springing up? What would be revealed when the white curtain should lift?
For many weeks, since the day when the Russian fleet passed the Straits of Malacca and had been reported from Singapore, the naval forces of Japan had seemed hardly more than a myth. "Where is Togo?" was the question on every lip. "Will he proceed southward and meet the enemy in the China Sea? Will he lie in wait for them between Formosa and the mainland—that mine-strewn sea where the fair Isles of the Fishermen, bristling with fortifications, bait the open trap? Will he lure them eastward, past the Philippines, to the Pacific, and attack them there, or will Japan allow her enemy to take refuge in her one port of Vladivostock, there to be brought to bay and pulled down as were her proud battle-ships and cruisers at Port Arthur?"
Back and forth under the sea flashed the questions and the appeals for news; but Japan gave no answer; her admiral was dumb. He and his ships disappeared from view. Newspaper correspondents burdened the cables with surmises, but no news. Every naval expert had his opinion to give—at space rates—but home editors and the great, waiting, impatient public clamoured in vain for authentic information.
At the War Office in Tokio a few men, small of stature and suave in demeanour, bowed and smiled as of old. They were gentle, courteous, mild, and inscrutable. They received and sent despatches without a gleam of emotion in their dark faces. They saw, in these despatches the North Pacific, with each bay and port and headland, the approaching Muscovite enemy and the leashed fleet of Japan, as a crystal-gazer holds a far-off scene in the hollow of his hand. One day their smiles faded, for a moment, and their eyes grew stern as they dictated a new order. They were crushing an empire.
In the Winter Palace of Tsarskoe-Selo a slightly built young man with a dark beard and pale, irresolute countenance paced the marble floor nervously. He had seen his proudest fortress in the East reduced to submission; his armies, whose watchword had been, "Russia never withdraws," driven back, beaten, overwhelmed by the soldiers of despised Nippon; his war-ships tortured by shot and shell, by enemies upon the sea and beneath its waters; and he had read report after report of their loss and of the death of countless thousands of men, "at the Czar's command." And now his new fleet, brought together and built up at enormous expense, but ill-manned and ill-managed, had all but finished its long voyage, and had entered hostile seas. Upon this fleet hung all his hope of retrieving the disasters of the war. One great naval victory, and Russia would be wild with joy. The past would be forgotten and the name of the Little Father once more revered.
The Baltic fleet halted, for coal and provisions, off the friendly port of Saigon, the leading city of the French possessions in Lower China. Nebogatoff, with a third squadron, was hurrying across the Indian Ocean to join Rojestvensky, who now anxiously awaited his approach. The sympathies of the French ports were but half concealed; the needed supplies came in abundance. Japan calmly but sternly remonstrated at this apparent breach of neutrality, and France was obliged to warn the Russians off her coast. Nebogatoff, however, had succeeded in adding his ships to those of the larger squadrons, and Rojestvensky, with his entire fleet coaled and provisioned, was now ready for the decisive battle. Week after week passed, and still no smoke of the hostile armada appeared on the northern horizon. Compelled to change his station day by day, the Russian moved nervously here and there in the China Sea inviting attack. He sent out reports that he was about to essay the narrow passage west of Formosa, either east or west of the Pescadores; he harboured his fleet under the lee of the great island of Hainan; he professed an intention to thread the dangerous passages north of Luzon and make a dash across the open Pacific, for the friendly port. Still the wily Japanese remained silent, unheard, unseen, until the supplies of her harassed, perplexed, impatient enemy once more diminished and her bunkers were again nearly empty.
At last, driven to desperation by the refusal of the inscrutable, invisible foe to emerge from the obscurity where he lurked, Rojestvensky set the signal to advance. He hoped that the Japanese had been misled by rumours of his escape to the open Pacific, and that by a direct course northward through the Korean Straits he could reach Vladivostock, now so few miles away, after his weary seven months' voyage from the Baltic. The fog of the early morning was dense. No scout-ship of the enemy was visible. It would take time to notify Togo of any movement of his adversary. Forming in double line, with strict orders for silence throughout every ship, the great flotilla got under way and started northward through the early morning mist.
In days gone by the leader of an armed force could obtain information of the manœuvres of his enemy only by means of trusty couriers. Later, written messages were despatched by aides, who brought the news and conveyed orders, riding hard or traversing the sea in swift boats. Centuries passed and the telegraph began to play its part in the transmission of despatches, to be succeeded in its turn by the field telephone. But as the Russo-Japanese war brought into practical use for the first time the terrible submarine torpedo-boat, so it found a new and marvellous medium for communication between headquarters and outposts of an army or fleet. The ancient Samurai of Nippon fought with two swords; their descendants in 1905 wielded the submarine and the wireless telegraph. As Rojestvensky's sombre fleet moved forward there were no armed scouts dashing across the waves to announce their coming; the electric cable, far below, was dumb; but the very sky above, the waters that were ploughed by the black keels, at the moment when the harassed Russians began to breathe freely, were betraying them.
"At exactly 5.30 A.M., on Saturday, May 27th, a wireless message was received at the naval base of the Japanese: 'The enemy's squadron is in sight.'"
Under shelter of the island off Fusan, on the east coast of Korea, lay sixty or more grey ships, their fires banked, smoke slowly floating from their stacks. They had lain thus for weeks, waiting for that message. The instant it was received the decks of every vessel became alive with nimble sailors. Cables were slipped, fires scattered and heaped high with coal, ammunition-hoists handled, and garments flung aside as the men stripped for action. The fleet slowly moved eastward over the waters of the Japan Sea, which roughened under the wind that gathered force as day broadened. Eagerly the small brown fighting men sprang to quarters and pointed to the east, where the sky grew golden with the emblem of their nation, the Rising Sun.
Before noon wireless messages brought news that the Russian fleet had chosen the eastern passage of the Straits, between the Tsu Islands and Japan. At two o'clock the smoke of Rojestvensky's flagship blurred the southern horizon. Instantly a line of signal flags fluttered to the yard-arm of the Japanese battle-ship Mikasa: "The destiny of an empire depends upon this action. You are all expected to do your uttermost."
Straight on, with superb courage, came the armada of the White Czar. In the double column the weaker ships held the port positions, thus offering the least resistance to attack on that side, and at the same time blanketing the fire of the heavier turret guns of their own first-class battle-ships.
A roll of smoke burst from the bows of the Kniaz Souvaroff, followed almost instantly by a roar from the huge twelve-inch guns of the Mikasa. The greatest naval battle in the history of the world had begun.
The action became general. The Russian ships at the opening of the fight changed their course and endeavoured to break through the enveloping line of their foe, but were driven back at every point. The old tactics of Oyama at Liaoyang and Moukden were repeated by Togo on the sea. Once more the fatal horse-shoe front closed in. To starboard, to port, ahead, and astern the thunders of the Japanese guns dismayed the untrained sailors of the Baltic fleet. Within less than an hour the Borodino was seen to be on fire. Five Japanese war-ships bore down upon her. To rescue, to save? To pour a deadlier storm of shot and shell into the doomed ship; to pierce its wounds anew, to sweep its struggling, bleeding, shrieking crew from its decks and send ship and men to the bottom. Through and through the barbette, and the hull itself, plunged and exploded the steel projectiles. Dead and dying men lay in heaps everywhere about the decks; the ammunition hoists were wrecked and the steering-gear disabled, so that the great, tortured battle-ship could only stagger over the water round and round in a circle, her remaining guns still firing at intervals, until the merciful waves swept over her, and with all on board, living and dead, she went down.
The flagship bearing Admiral Rojestvensky was early singled out for attack. When the ship was in flames and in momentary danger of sinking the admiral was transferred to a destroyer, from which he was soon after taken by the Japanese and sent ashore, a prisoner, severely wounded.
So the battle raged, and vessel after vessel, bearing the Russian flag, was battered to pieces and sent to the bottom, while Togo's fleet seemed to bear a charmed life. At last the merciful night, that so often has laid its quieting hand of peace upon maddened, struggling combatants by land and sea, brooded over the waters of the Sea of Japan. The few ships from the Baltic that could still move under control crept northward in the vain hope of reaching safety. There was no longer any dream of victory; escape, escape from this horrible, relentless foe, was the only thought.
But while the heavier ships had been dealing deadly blows that fair May afternoon, the pack of smaller craft, the torpedo-boats and destroyers, had been for the most part held back under the lee of the islands; held back with difficulty, for their crews and officers were wild to enter the engagement. In the conning-tower of the Fujiyama Commander Oto Owari chafed and fretted over the forced inaction, his dark eyes blazing and hands twitching. Before midnight the signal came down the line to advance.
Silently, like wolves gathering about a wounded herd, crouching low to the ground, the pack gathered around the ill-fated, shattered fleet. Then the word was given, and they rushed upon their prey. Searchlights flashed from the beleaguered ships, as they bravely turned at bay. Again and again the wolves were driven back. More than one of the fierce assailants never returned to the charge; but the rest closed the gaps, and cutting out one after another of the Russians, set their teeth of steel into her ribs until with a great cry she succumbed.
The Fujiyama was foremost in every rush, and staggered under the blows she received. Oto was everywhere, with his savage little ship, launching his torpedoes at the biggest vessels of the enemy. He was in full attack upon the Sissoi-Valiki, one of Rojestvensky's finest battle-ships, when a great shell exploded just in front of the conning-tower of the destroyer. It was a fatal blow. Oto, with a dozen others, all of them wounded, was hurled into the sea, from which he was rescued and taken on board the Kasuga, insensible, and therefore blissfully unconscious that his ship had gone to the bottom. The fight drifted northward.
Sunday morning dawned, "so cool, so calm, so bright." The battle was resumed, each flying ship of the Russians with three or four of the enemy hanging about her and hammering her with shell and solid shot. As on the preceding day and night the terrors of the Baltic crews were increased by the evident presence of submarines. Several of the western ships, with no hostile craft visible in the open sea, had suddenly felt the impact of an awful blow from below, followed by an explosion that tore her hull to pieces, while the unseen assailant darted off beneath the waves for fresh prey.
The terrible drama was brought to a close by the surrender of Admiral Nebogatoff's ships, on Sunday afternoon, off the rocks of Liancourt. The next morning the world stood thunderstruck as it heard of the utter annihilation of Russia's proud fleet. Six battle-ships, five cruisers, and many other smaller vessels sunk, and two battle-ships, with several defence ships or destroyers, captured. It was this last item that was most significant. Even Spain had gone down fighting, on the coast of Cuba and off Manila, under the withering fire of Dewey, Sampson, and Schley; for the first time in modern warfare a battle-ship, nay, two of them, had run up the white flag. Truly Russia, haughty Russia, which "never carried to the front material from which to make a flag of truce," had been humbled in the dust. And in the Winter Palace of Tsarskoe-Selo the pale young Czar was weeping.