Bewildering personality! Again, as I heard her name connected with an intrigue of the basest kind, a criminal conspiracy to influence the ruler of Russia by feigned revelations from the spirits of the dead, I recalled the sight I had last had of her, kneeling in her oratory, scourging herself before—my portrait!
There was no longer any fear that M. Auguste would prove obdurate on the question of terms. He pocketed his first five hundred rubles, and departed, vowing that the Baltic fleet should never get farther than Libau, if it was in the power of spirits to prevent it.
Desirous to relieve Lord Bedale’s mind as far as possible I despatched the following wire to him the next morning:
Sailing of Baltic Fleet postponed indefinitely. No danger for the present. Watch Germany.
I sent a fuller account of the situation to a son of Mr. Katahashi, who was in England, nominally attached to the staff of the Imperial Bank, but really on business of a confidential character which it would be indiscreet on my part to indicate.
I may say that I particularly cautioned the young Japanese to avoid any action calculated to give the least color to the German legends about warships being secretly manufactured in British yards to the order of the Mikado’s Government.
Every reader who has followed the course of the war with any attention will recollect the history of the fleet thus detained by my contrivance.
Week after week, and month after month, the Baltic Fleet was declared to be on the point of departure. Time after time the Czar went on board to review it in person, and speak words of encouragement to the officers and crew. And every time, after everything had been pronounced ready, some mysterious obstacle arose at the last moment to detain the fleet in Russian waters.
Journalists, naval experts, politicians and other ill-informed persons invented or repeated all sorts of explanations to account for the series of delays.
Only in the very innermost circles of the Russian Court it was whispered that the guardian spirit of the great Peter, the founder of Russia’s naval power, had repeatedly come to warn his descendant of disasters in store for the fleet, should it be permitted to sail.