Chapter Eighteen.
THE BATTLE OF THE YELLOW SEA.
It was still quite early—half-past six o’clock in the morning, to be exact—when a gun from the Mikasa and a string of flags, drooping from the end of her signal yard in the breathless calm of a hot August morning, gave the signal for the Japanese fleet to go forth to battle.
In accordance with the Admiral’s instructions, the Yakumo was to lead the way to sea, and it was a proud moment for me when, standing upon the cruiser’s navigating bridge, I personally rang down the order to the engine-room, “Ahead, half-speed, both engines!” And I considered—and still consider—that I had every reason to be proud; for here was I, a lad not yet quite nineteen years of age, captain of one of the finest and most formidable cruisers in the Japanese navy. And I had attained to that position—I may say it now, I think, without laying myself open to the charge of being unduly vain—solely by my own exertions and without a particle of favour shown me, excepting that, when my own country contemptuously dispensed with my services, the aliens whom I was now serving received me with the utmost courtesy and kindness. Ah, well! thank God, that bitter period in my life is past now, and I can bear to look back upon it with equanimity, but the memory of it often swept down upon me like a black cloud in the days of which I am now writing.
But there was no thought of my unmerited disgrace and ruined career in my own country to interfere with my happiness or humble my pride upon that glorious morning; I enjoyed the satisfaction of knowing that my innocence had been made clear, that the stain of guilt had been removed from my name, and I was as happy just then as I suppose it is ever possible for mortal to be.
And indeed, quite apart from matters of a purely personal nature, it would have been very difficult for any normal-minded individual to have been otherwise than buoyant upon that particular morning, for everything conspired to make one so. The weather was glorious; the sky, a clear, rich sapphire blue, was, for a wonder, without a cloud, the air was so still that until we got under way and made a wind for ourselves the signal flags drooped in motionless folds, and their interpretation was largely a matter of guesswork. Then there was all the pomp and circumstance of modern war, the ships already cleared for action, and each of them decorated with at least two enormous battle-flags—wrought by the dainty fingers of Japan’s fairest daughters—flaunting defiantly from her mast-heads. It must have been a magnificent sight to behold that proud fleet steaming out to sea, ship after ship falling into line with machine-like precision and keeping distance perfectly, first the squadron of cruisers, led by the Yakumo; then the other five armoured cruisers, with the Asama in the van; then the four battleships—accompanied by the Nisshin and Kasuga, which were powerful enough to take their place in the line of battle—and, finally, the swarm of heterogeneous craft composed of the older and less important cruisers and other vessels, and those wasps of the sea, the destroyers.
The Yakumo had scarcely begun to gather way when the flagship signalled “Course South-West by South; speed twelve knots.”
As our signalman ran up the answering pennant, I entered the chart-room and, approaching the table, upon which a chart of the Yellow Sea lay spread out, requested Mr Shiraishi, the navigating lieutenant, to lay down a South-West by South course upon the chart, that we might see where it would take us. He did so, and I saw with satisfaction that it would take us some twenty-five miles to the eastward of Encounter Rock, that unfortunate spot near which the Japanese fleet had too prematurely revealed its presence upon the occasion of its previous encounter with the Russians. Twenty-five miles! That was excellent. If we held on upon that course we should cross the bows of the Russians at such a distance as would enable us to pass unseen, and then come up from the southward in the enemy’s rear, so cutting him off from Port Arthur and rendering it impossible for him to avoid a fight.
Shortly after clearing the harbour, the Asama and her attendant cruisers parted company with us, striking off to the westward, with the object of working round in the rear of the Russians, and again I mentally complimented Togo upon his astuteness.
Nine o’clock came, and a few minutes later there arrived a wireless message from the Admiral for our squadron to change course thirty-four degrees to the westward. I wondered what this might portend, for we had been receiving almost continuous wireless messages from the squadron off Port Arthur, the latest of which told us that the Russians, although undoubtedly intending a sortie, had not yet started. I again visited the chart-room, and with Shiraishi’s assistance discovered that our new course would bring us within about seven miles south-east of Encounter Rock about noon.