The Kasumi was rolling and pitching so inconsiderately when Bob boarded her, that in making his way along the deck in Yamaguchi's wake he had to cling to every available means of support. And yet the swell had only been sufficient to give a pleasant, slow, rocking movement to the Hatsuse he had just left. But it was not until the gallant craft began to drive her nose at speed into a head sea that Bob began to realize what life on a torpedo-destroyer really was. There was perhaps a little less roll, but the pitching was a revelation of what a boat can suffer without breaking her back. Bob clung to a stanchion, expecting every moment that the huge mass of water breaking over the fore-bridge and flooding the deck amidships would rend the vessel asunder. It seemed impossible that the hull, of merely egg-shell thickness, could survive the strain. The low bow slugged into a monstrous bank of green water. "Now she's done for!" thought Bob. But a moment later she was balanced giddily on the crest of the wave, and began to switchback into the abyss beneath. All the time the mighty heart of the vessel was throbbing strenuously; Bob caught himself counting the pulse with a kind of anxiety lest the engines should prove unequal to their task.
"How do you like this?" said Yamaguchi in Bob's ear.
"Pretty well; it's rather be-wild—"
He was choked by a shower of spray, which left him gasping.
"You'll soon get used to it," said Yamaguchi with a smile.
It was some hours, however, before Bob was sufficiently accustomed to the Kasumi's eccentricities to be able to move about with any freedom. He found meal-time in the little ward-room particularly trying. The food was served out in tins; the officers sat at the table with feet planted firmly on the floor, and managed to gulp their soup between the rolls of the vessel. But Bob was not sufficiently practised to time his movements properly. He would raise the tin to his lips, only to find that he opened his mouth on empty air, or that the soup made a premature sally and covered a considerable part of his face and clothes, a mere starvation portion entering at the proper gate.
There was an even more unpleasant experience in store for him when he turned in for the night. Do what he could he was unable to avoid being tossed off the settee, rolled under the table, and brought up with a jolt at the opposite side of the room. The most ingeniously-contrived breastwork of cushions proved of no avail; it might survive a roll and a pitch separately, but when the motions were combined it was incapable of the complicated resistance necessary, and Bob, just dropping off to sleep, found himself sprawling among his bastions and outworks beneath the table.
"Hang it!" he growled, groping upwards after one of these mishaps; "better stay where I'm chucked!"
He pulled his coverlets off, and making a bed beneath the settee and one leg of the table, managed to reduce the area of his gyrations by clutching the table leg whenever his equilibrium was in jeopardy.
It was a still, fair morning when, on awaking from his troubled sleep and going on deck, he saw before him the city of Chemulpo rising from the sea-front up a steep snow-clad hill. It looked very picturesque in the sunlight. The quay was crowded with Koreans in their strange black mitre-shaped caps and long tasselled coats; coolies trudging along under burdens pendent to yokes of forked sticks bound to their shoulders; greatcoated Japanese soldiers, just landed from the transports in the harbour, moving with a brisk purposeful alacrity. Brawny Korean boatmen were propelling heavy-laden sampans from the transports to the quay; children in blue padded garments were running about, watching everything with wide curious eyes, and getting in everybody's way.