For two days Vladivostok had been buzzing with rumor and excitement. The fact that a battle between the rival fleets was imminent, if Rozhdestvensky was not already at hand-grips with Togo, was made known through telegrams from Europe, and when it was learned Monday morning that a Russian cruiser had been sighted off Askold Island, headed for the harbor, the city was filled with the wildest reports of every nature.
Story of Russian Survivors
The inhabitants clustered in the streets, thronged the waterside or climbed the frowning hills overlooking the harbor for a better view. Finally, toward 6 o'clock in the evening, a graceful cruiser with two snowy-white stacks, shot in view at the entrance to the Golden Horn and rounded to an anchorage beneath the bristling guns of the curving promontory. From afar the broken stump of her mizzen-mast and a shot hole showing black upon the white paint of one stack indicated that the cruiser had encountered the Japanese. As the anchor chain rattled in the hawse holes the vessel wreathed itself in smoke—it was an admiral's salute in honor of Rear Admiral Von Jessen. Scarcely had the boom of the last cannon begun to echo from the surrounding hills when Von Jessen's flagship, the cruiser Rossia, answered the salute, and a minute later the guns of the fortress took up the cannonade.
Excitement beyond description seized the thronging spectators, who, with frantic "huzzas," tossed high their caps.
Citizens embraced each other and danced jubilantly upon the pier, while the crews of the ships in the harbor joined in wild cheering.
In a thrice the boats were dropped from the davits, and in a moment the officers of the cruisers and torpedo boats in the harbor and the military officials from the fortress were swarming on board the Almaz to learn news of the fight.
Saw Flagship Go Down
The story was short. According to the officers of the Almaz, the fleet under Rozhdestvensky met the Japanese in the Straits of Korea, near Tsu Island, and the opposing fleets immediately closed in.
Being lightly armored, the Almaz, as had been expected by Admiral Rozhdestvensky before the battle, separated itself from the main fleet at the first opportunity and headed for Vladivostok soon after the commencement of the action, but not too soon to observe that the losses on both sides in the titanic combat were great.
Early in the battle an officer of the Almaz, while watching Rozhdestvensky's flagship, the battleship Kniaz Souvaroff, for a signal, saw the flagship shudder from stem to stern, as if under a blow from a gigantic hammer, and hesitate in her course, while the waves rose high from her armored sides. Then she commenced to list and sink.