I could not make it out at all. I had always understood that in a modern naval battle, everybody would immediately run at everybody else, and this looked so little like the sort of thing that I was inclined to think that what I saw was only an advance guard of the Russian Fleet. Yet it looked too large a mass for that, and my doubts were presently set at rest.
Signals were made to one of the German cruisers that had come to us the day before, and she presently turned and slowly steamed to the southward. She passed us so very close that I took heart of grace to call out—
‘Is that the Russian Fleet?’
And the answer came back—
‘Oh! ye-es, zat is ze Russians—ve sall fight zem! So!’ and the steamer went on her way.
I began to have some sort of an idea that, perhaps, neither fleet was able to make out the force of the other, and was, therefore, not in a hurry to bring it to action. And this might easily be so. Though the sky was clear overhead and the water quite smooth, it was misty round the horizon, and so far as the Russian Fleet was concerned, it seemed to me very likely that even the advanced German cruisers were not able to discover more than I could, between the mist and the smoke.
But as I puzzled myself over this, I also thought that, perhaps, as the main attack of Germany was going on by land, it might be her game merely to watch the Russian Fleet. For if the Germans were badly beaten at sea, Russia might be left free to land and cut their communications. I had never thought of this kind of thing before, and I quite woke up with a new sort of idea, for I saw quite well that the Russian Fleet could not do anything unless they first thoroughly beat the Germans.
Engagement off Dantzig—Sinking of a Russian Torpedo-Boat.
I was so keen on my new ideas that I wanted to know more about it, and so steamed well to the N.E. to see what the Russian Fleet was like. Just as I did so, I saw a very small Russian steaming away to the south-eastward as if to get the look at the German Fleet which I was going to get at the Russian. She was stoking up tremendously, and evidently going at great speed. Two of the German cruisers in front immediately turned to the eastward to cut her off, but the plucky little Russian did not seem to mind; they closed one another very rapidly, and some puffs of smoke, followed by distant bangs, showed a little game of long balls. The Russian had evidently much greater speed than the others, and was drawing them astern, but quite away from her own fleet or supports of any kind. All of a sudden I saw she was blowing off steam furiously, and that her speed had slackened, if not dropped altogether. She began to fire more rapidly, and so did the Germans. All three were hidden by the cloud of smoke they raised. My engineer was frightfully excited; he said, ‘It was one of them new boilers a-priming,’ and that it was all up with the Russian. Sure enough it was, for all three ships presently came out of the smoke, the little Russian with the German flag flying over her own.
