“And haven’t you a presentiment? You’ve been under fire before,” asked a young sub-lieutenant, coming up, with his hand in his pocket, in which was evidently a letter destined for the treasure chest.
Bogdanoff got annoyed. “What do you mean by a presentiment? I’m not your fortune-teller! I tell you what! If Japanese guns begin talking to us to-morrow you will feel something soon enough,—but you won’t feel anything before then!”[8]
Some more officers approached. Times without number we had hotly discussed the question,—would we meet the whole of the Japanese fleet at Tsu-shima, or only part of it?
Optimists asserted that Togo would be misled, and would patrol to the North to look out for us, as the Terek and Kuban had on the 22nd gone round the eastern shores of Japan endeavouring to attract as much attention there as possible.[9]
Pessimists declared that Togo was as well able as we were to understand the conditions, and would know that a single coaling was not sufficient to enable us to steam all round Japan; we should have to coal again. And where? We were no longer in the tropics; the weather here was anything but reliable, which meant we could not count upon coaling at sea. Take shelter in some bay?—but there were telegraph stations, and, of course, intelligence posts, everywhere. Togo would learn of it in good time, so what would he gain by hastening northward? Even if we succeeded in coaling at sea and slipped unnoticed into one of the Straits, we couldn’t conceal our movements there, thanks to their narrowness. And then—submarine and floating mines, sown along our course, and attacks by torpedo-boats, which would be easy even in broad daylight!
It was impossible to pass unnoticed through these Straits even in a fog or in bad weather; how then could a fleet accompanied by transports hope to escape observation? Even if the Almighty did bring us through all this, what was beyond?—the meeting with the Japanese fleet which from Tsu-shima could always come out across our course while our fleet would have already been harassed in the Straits by torpedo-boats as well as every conceivable type of mine.
“Gentlemen—Gentlemen! let me speak!” exclaimed the first lieutenant and senior navigating officer, Zotoff, who was always fond of discussions and liked making his voice heard. “It is quite clear that the best course for us is up the eastern side of the gulf of Korea. My chief reason for saying so is because here it is wide and deep, while there is room for us to manœuvre, and it can be navigated without danger in any weather. In fact, the worse the weather the better for us. All this has been talked over till nothing more remains to be said, and considered till nothing is left to consider; even disciples of Voltaire themselves would admit this. Presumably Togo is no greater fool than we, and knows this. I assume that he also knows how to use a pair of compasses and is acquainted with the four rules of arithmetic! This being so he can easily calculate that, if we steam round Japan, deciding in the face of our knowledge to brave the mines before meeting him, it would still be possible for him to intercept us on the road to Vladivostok, if, at the same time as we come out of the ocean into the Straits, he starts from ... Attention, gentlemen! ... from the northernmost point of Tsu-shima. There is no doubt that arrangements have been made to organise a defence of the Straits by mines. The naval ports of Aomori and Mororan are on either side. If any one doesn’t know it he ought to be ashamed of himself. Togo may tell off some of his smaller mining vessels to go there, but he, with his main force (I would even go so far as to say with the whole of his fleet)—where will he be? No, I will put another question: Where ought he to be? Why! nowhere else but off the northern point of Tsu-shima. He can gain nothing by loitering about at sea, so he will be lying in some bay.”
“In Mazampo, for instance?” asked Sub-Lieutenant Ball, the junior navigating officer.
“Mazampo—if you like—but let me finish. It is childish to hope that the Japanese main fleet will be out of the way. I think we have reached the culminating point of our adventures. To-morrow the decision must be made: either vertically”—and, putting his hand above his head, he energetically waved it downwards in front of him—“or”—quietly moving his arm out to the right, and dropping it slowly downwards in a circular direction—“a longer route, but to the west all the same.”
“How? Why? Why to the west?” broke in the bystanders.