“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.