Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun

by Collingwood Harry

I looked round to see if I could see anything of her, and presently the shifting of the searchlight beam from the Yahiko revealed her coming along in fine style, and heading straight for her appointed berth. Hitherto, the Russian batteries had been too busy, attending to us others, to take much notice of her, and she appeared to be all ataunto and quite uninjured. I felt curious to see what was going to happen to her, and gave my crew the order to “Easy all, and lay on your oars!”

As I did so, a Russian destroyer—I could not tell whether it was the craft that had torpedoed the Fukui, or another—emerged from the darkness, heading straight for the Yahiko, as though to run her down! Would they dare? I wondered. Surely not. But if they did not, there was no reason why the Yahiko should not; she was a stout-built, merchant steamer, and, old as she was, would shear through the destroyer’s thin plating as though it were brown paper. If I had been in charge of the Yahiko, I would not have hesitated an instant, indeed I would have jumped at the chance, and in my excitement I leaped to my feet and, making a funnel of my hands, yelled frantically:

“ Yahiko ahoy! Give her the stem, man; give her the stem!”

But at that precise moment the Russian guns opened again, this time directing their fire upon the Yahiko, and my hail was effectually drowned by the crash of the explosions.

I am of opinion that, a moment later, the commander of the Yahiko saw his chance, just too late to fully avail himself of it, at all events the bows of the steamer suddenly swept round, and although the destroyer instantly shifted her helm, she was too late to entirely avoid a collision; the rounding of the Yahiko’s bow struck her and roughly shouldered her aside, both craft reeling under the impact; and at that instant the destroyer let fly every gun that would bear, the fire from them actually scorching the Japanese crew, who were at that moment preparing to lower their boat. The Yahiko passed on, and so did the destroyer, the latter vanishing in the darkness to seaward, while the Yahiko, the centre of a very galaxy of bursting shells, staggered on in a sinking condition, and went down at the very moment when, with astounding skill and coolness, her skipper had brought her to the exact spot for which she was intended.

Then it was seen that, either through some miscalculation or, more probably, because the Russians had widened the channel, there still remained an unfilled gap, wide enough for a single ship to pass through! It was a most vexatious thing, after all the trouble that we had taken and the ordeal which we had passed through; but it could not be helped; it was the fortune of war.

Stay, though! Why should it not be helped? All that was needed was another steamer—or perhaps two steamers—to fill the gap, and the thing was done. And, hang it all! I was game to do the job myself to-morrow night, when the Russians would least expect me.

But, to do the job effectually, it was highly necessary to know the exact width of the gap, and the depth of water in it; and now was the time to ascertain those particulars, while we were on the spot. I would do it!

Then came the very practical question: How? What means had we to take soundings, or to measure the gap between the sunken Fukui and the Yoneyama? I looked about me, and found that all we had with us was the boat’s painter, a piece of rope some seven or eight fathoms long, which might serve as a sounding-line, if only we had a sinker of some sort, which, unhappily, we had not. Then one of the men in the boat, realising what I wanted, informed me that, while preparing the boat for lowering, he had chanced to glance into the locker in the stern-sheets, and had noticed a fishing-line there. Would that be of any use? Of course it would; the very thing for sounding, at all events. We had that line out in double-quick time, cut away the hooks, and then proceeded to knot it at exact intervals corresponding with the length of the boat’s after-thwart. Precisely what that length might be, we could ascertain afterward.

But, how to measure the width of the gap? There seemed to me to be but one way to do it, and that was by taking the length of our boat herself as a unit of measurement; not a very satisfactory method, I admitted, yet better than nothing. So thereupon we set to work.