At four o'clock the Korietz was blown up by her commander. There were two sharp explosions, forward and aft. A mass of flame arose, and a column of black smoke rolled upward. As the noise of the explosion died away the Russians on the other ships could be heard across the bay singing the national anthem.
The Variag's sea-cocks were now opened, and the ship gradually filled. At five, a succession of small, sharp explosions were heard. The Russian captain, fearing that the Japanese would arrive, begged the commander of a British war-ship to fire at her water-line, but he refused.
The list to port became more and more marked, and flames burst out from the sides and stern of the beautiful ship which, like the Retvizan, had been the pride of the builders in Cramp's Philadelphia shipyard a few years before.
The ship's guns remained fast to the end, but there was a tremendous clatter and roar of gear falling to leeward. At last, with a slow and majestic plunge, the Variag sank, all her tubes charged with torpedoes, and her great rifled guns pointing upward. Soon afterward the mail-boat Sungari was fired, and the flames sent their red glow over the harbour of Chemulpo until it and all the ships seemed embayed in a sea of blood, while the wounded and dying men moaned below decks. So ended the first terrible day of the war, and night fell, as softly, as gently, as on the hills of Palestine long ago when the holy Babe lay in the manger and the angels sang "Peace on earth—good will to men!"
CHAPTER XI. IN THE MIKADO'S CAPITAL.
On the evening after the event narrated in the last chapter a group of foreigners sat on the pleasant verandah of one of the largest hotels in Tokio. They were easily distinguishable from the natives that thronged the street and square, not only by the Occidental costumes—of the latest and most fashionable styles—which adorned the ladies, but by the bright and animated faces with which they looked out on the strange scene before them, and discussed the astounding news which had just been displayed, "in real tea-chest letters," Edith said, on the newspaper bulletins.
Edith and Ethelwyn Black had been invited by their father's old friends Colonel and Mrs. Selborne to join them in a trip around the world. The two young girls were delighted with the prospect, and with some reluctance Major Black consented to the plan. His wife had died five years before, and a widowed sister kept house for him; so, although the separation bore hardly upon the jolly major—from whom Wynnie must have inherited her unfailing flow of spirits—there really was no good excuse for letting the girls miss such an opportunity to enlarge their horizon, mental and physical. The party left New York in December, spent Christmas in San Francisco, and late in January landed in Yokohama. After a brief tour inland they went to Tokio, arriving just before the assault of the Japanese on the ships in the harbour of Port Arthur.
On this special evening Tokio was a blaze of light. Not only were lanterns strung over every shop door and the porches of private houses, but in groups of twos and threes the golden and crimson globes veered wildly through the streets, borne by children as well as by their jubilant elders. Newspaper boys ran to and fro with extras, their little bells jingling and their shrill cries sounding above the roar of the crowds. The naval cadets of Japan in their neat uniforms massed in a solid column, and their cheer rang out, loud and clear: "Banzai! Dai Nippon banzai! Banzai, banzai, banzai!"