It was short, but to the point. Hsi had entered the conning-tower with a drawn sword in his hand, and before the admiral could open his mouth the Prince had ruthlessly cut him down. After that the admiral knew no more until he awoke to find Frobisher pouring spirit and water down his throat.
He was profuse in his thanks to the young Englishman, and, when he had learned from the latter all that had happened, promised that he would never forget the brave deed by which he had been rescued from eternal shame and dishonour. Then, despite his wound, which Frobisher roughly bandaged, the plucky old fellow insisted upon going on deck again and taking charge.
But when the two men regained the open, what a sight met their horrified eyes! The Kau-ling, which, although dismantled, had been fighting bravely when Frobisher led his boarders away, had disappeared, and the Tung-yen, the engines of which had broken down, had been surrounded by five Japanese ships, and was even then sinking. The Yung-chau, which had taken fire early in the fight, was now but an abandoned, charred wreck; and even the gallant Shan-si and Chen Yuen, which had done great deeds ever since the beginning, were now terribly damaged. Frobisher’s own ship, a short distance away, under Drake’s able seamanship was still giving a splendid account of herself, but even she, Frobisher’s experienced eye could tell, was very badly mauled.
In short, of the ten ships which China had possessed that morning four were destroyed, one had crept away too seriously damaged to remain in action, one had gone as convoy to the transports, and the remaining four were all badly damaged. As for the torpedo-boats, the Japanese destroyers and smaller cruisers had made short work of them. Of the seven, three were sunk, one had been captured, two had fled toward Wei-hai-wei hotly pursued by a big Japanese destroyer, and only one remained with the remnant of the Chinese fleet.
The Japanese had lost only three small cruisers and a destroyer, so that their fleet was even now almost as numerous as China’s had been at the beginning of the battle. True, the Yoshino and the Fuji were little better than wrecks, and the other ships had one and all received a very severe drubbing; but they were still afloat and more or less under control, while their undamaged guns now outnumbered those of the Chinese by about six to one.
The odds were too heavy. To keep on fighting with the four remaining ships against the still powerful Japanese fleet would be simply throwing those four ships away to no purpose, and shedding China’s best blood without avail. If those two battleships and two cruisers could still be retained for China, they would live to fight another day, for with the addition of the southern squadron, still intact and undamaged, they would once more make up a powerful fleet; but if they were lost or captured now, that would be the end of them, and possibly the end of China also.
Ting realised all this at a glance, and with a bitter groan ordered the signal to retire to be hoisted—the enemy to be held at bay, if possible, while the evolution was being carried out.
As it was manifestly impossible for Frobisher to rejoin his own ship, owing to lack of boats, he took charge as captain of the Ting Yuen in place of the traitor prince, confined below, and, in company with the other battleship, the Chen Yuen, endeavoured to beat off the Japanese craft that were manoeuvring to surround the two remaining Chinese cruisers. And so bold a front—or rather, rear—did the four ships present that the Japanese before long relinquished the pursuit, not caring, in view of the success already obtained, to risk losing any more of their already sadly-battered ships by exposing them to the now-concentrated fire of the big Chinese ships’ eighty-ton guns, the projectiles from which had already done so much damage.
They accordingly drew off and gave up the half-hearted chase, employing the short time still remaining before darkness fell in effecting some very necessary repairs to their ships; while the broken remnant of China’s northern squadron pursued its halting way toward Wei-hai-wei, the small torpedo-boat still remaining to them acting as scout in advance, on the look-out for the Japanese destroyer which, earlier in the day, had left the action in pursuit of a couple of damaged Chinese torpedo-boats.
In the late twilight they fell in with the destroyer on her return from her unsuccessful pursuit, the two small craft having succeeded in effecting their escape. She had evidently anticipated a complete victory for her own side, and seeing lights in the distance, had made for them, thinking that, by this time, every ship would be in Japanese hands; and she did not discover her mistake until she was under the Chinese guns. Then she attempted to cut and run; but she was too late. There was a rattle of machine-gun fire which drove her men from the deck torpedo-tubes, and a few seconds later one of the Chen Yuen’s big guns plumped a shell right into her, crumpling her up like cardboard and sending her to the bottom within a few seconds. Some—a very few—of her men were rescued and made prisoners by the Chinese torpedo-boat, but the majority, dead or disabled from the effects of the bursting shell, went to feed the sharks.