“Come back, you madman!” shouted Frobisher. “What are you about?” But Drake either could not or would not hear; he kept on his way, regardless of the hail of rifle and machine-gun bullets which flicked the water into foam all round him.
Then Frobisher and his crew saw what the gallant Englishman was about. As the deadly missile approached, hissing its way along the surface of the water, Drake stopped swimming and awaited it, and, as it swept past, flung his arm round the smooth, glistening machine. His arm was nearly torn from its socket, but he managed to get a grip upon the thing just forward of its greatest diameter; and, once he had secured his hold, he was not going to let go again. Then with fierce, strong strokes Drake began to kick out with his feet, pushing strongly at the nose of the torpedo as he did so; and, wonder of wonders! the menacing head gradually swung away from the Chih’ Yuen’s side. She was saved!
But that was not enough for Drake. The torpedo might hit some other Chinese craft, so, encouraged by his first success, he did not cease his efforts until he had turned the Whitehead completely round and got it headed direct for a cluster of three Japanese cruisers. Then he struck out for the Chih’ Yuen, and was hauled aboard just as the cruiser was beginning to forge ahead once more. The torpedo, unnoticed, plugged into the side of the unsuspecting Soya, and a huge column of white water, upon which the ship appeared to rise bodily, announced the fact that it had done its deadly work effectively. And so it had, for before another five minutes had elapsed that unit of the Japanese Navy had also capsized and disappeared!
But while the Chih’ Yuen had been piling up successes for herself, and earning laurels for her brave young skipper’s brow—laurels with which the Chinese Government was afterwards only too proud to crown him—and while the gallant Englishman who captained the battleship Chen Yuen had been engaging no fewer than five Japanese ships at one and the same time, ay, and beating them off, too, matters had been going badly for the rest of the Chinese fleet. It is no exaggeration to say that if all the Chinese captains had fought as stubbornly as did the Englishmen, and if the ammunition had not proved, as it did in so many instances, to be faulty, the Chinese fleet would undoubtedly, in spite of the superior numbers of the enemy, have utterly destroyed the latter, and obtained full command of the sea. Japan would have been put back twenty-five years, there could have been no Russo-Japanese war, and China, instead of being, as she now is, a third-rate Power, might have held the premier position in Asia, as Japan so splendidly and skilfully does now. But, as so often happens, greed and dishonesty, self-seeking and cowardice on the part of high officials, nullified the efforts of the brave seamen who unavailingly gave their lives for their beloved country.
When Frobisher, intending to ram the Yoshino, came to look about him, his heart sank as he saw the havoc that had been wrought among the rest of the Chinese squadron. But, alas! worse by far was yet to come.
Note. The term “echelon” means, literally, “steps”, or a zig-zag formation of columns, such as is shown in sketch Number 2, where the Japanese formation has been altered from “line ahead”, as in sketch Number 1, to “echelon.”