The officer in charge had thoughtfully provided blankets and a flask of wine. Thus comforted, I was not long in fully recovering my strength, and by the time the launch had set us on shore my comrade in misfortune was also able to walk without difficulty.
The lieutenant who had picked us up showed the greatest consideration on learning that we had been blown up in an attempt to run a cargo of coal for the benefit of the Russian fleet. On landing we were taken before Admiral Makharoff, the brave man whom fate had marked out to perish two months later by a closely similar catastrophe.
The story which I told to the Admiral was very nearly true, though of course I suppressed the incidents which had taken place in Tokio.
I said that I had been charged to deliver a private communication from the Czar to the Mikado, sent in the hope of averting war, that I had arrived too late, and that, having to make my way back to Petersburg, I had meant to do a stroke of business on the way on behalf of his excellency.
My inspector’s uniform, which I had resumed on leaving Yokohama, confirmed my words, and Admiral Makharoff, after thanking me on behalf of the navy for my zeal, dismissed me with a present of a thousand rubles, and a permit to travel inland from Port Arthur.
Needless to say I did not forget to say good-by to my brave Englishman, to whom I handed over the Russian Admiral’s reward, thus doubling the amount I had promised him for his plucky stand against the mutineers.
I have hurried over these transactions, interesting as they were, in order to come to the great struggle which lay before me in the capital of Russia.