“Three craft on our starboard beam, sir, coming up from the south-west,” he reported.
“What do they look like?” I demanded, rising to my feet and staring out in the direction toward which the boy pointed.
“I cannot yet say, sir,” he replied. “At present they are too far off to reveal their character; indeed, I doubt if I should have seen them so soon, but for the fact that I glimpsed the flames issuing from one of their funnels.”
“Yes,” I said. “Thanks, Mr Uchida, I see them too. Have the goodness to bring me the night-glass from the chart-house. They appear to be steaming with lights out.”
The lad hurried away, and quickly returned with the night-glass, which I focused and applied to my eye. The night was overcast, but there were a few stars blinking out between the clouds, which were flying fast up from the westward, and by their feeble, uncertain light I was presently able to distinguish a little more clearly the three small, shapeless blurs that Uchida’s keen eyes had detected. They were little more than shapeless blurs still, even when viewed through the powerful lenses of the night-glass; but I was able to distinguish that one of them was considerably bigger than the other two, which were much of a size. It was the funnel of the big fellow that was showing the flames, which seemed to indicate that she was being driven, while the other two appeared to be running easily. Yet all three were in company. The appearance of the two smaller craft seemed to suggest to me that they might possibly be destroyers; but what the other was, I could not guess. She was not big enough for a cruiser or a transport; and the fact that she was evidently being hard driven to enable her to keep pace with her consorts—or, possibly, escort—led me to doubt whether she was a warship of any kind. One thing was pretty clear, which was that, like ourselves, they were evidently bound for Kinchau Bay. Were they enemies or friends? If the former, it was eminently undesirable that they should be permitted to arrive, and it was for me to look into the matter.
“How’s her head?” I demanded of the helmsman.
“East, three degrees south,” he replied.
“Shift your helm to east, twenty-five degrees south,” I ordered; and the bows of the destroyer swung round until she was heading for a point at which we could intercept the strangers. Then: “Mr Uchida,” I said, “pass the word to prepare to make the private night signal.”
The signal was presently hoisted to the yard-arm and displayed for fully five minutes without evoking a response; and then I knew that the strangers were enemies. We accordingly hauled down the signal again and cleared for action, loading both torpedo tubes as well. This done, we quickened up our pace to full speed; for if we were going to have a fight, I wanted it to be out there in the open, so far away from the shore that the sounds of firing would not reach the Russians about Kinchau, and so apprise them of the presence of an enemy in the adjacent waters.
As we rapidly neared the enemy I made them out to be two destroyers, evidently escorting the third craft, which was a single-funnelled steamer of apparently about eighteen hundred tons. She sat deep in the water, as though loaded to her full capacity, but she was much too small for a transport, and for the life of me I could not imagine what her character might be. But there could be no doubt whatever concerning the destroyers; they were self-evident Russians, for they were four-funnelled, the funnels arranged in pairs, which was distinctly characteristic of a certain class of Russian destroyer.