d a puff of white smoke rose from a thicket, and
one of the fugitives fell. The hunters had ambushed them on this spot,
and as they rushed for the shelter of some rocks near by five more fell
before the bullets of their foes.

The fire was returned with some effect, and then a last desperate rush
was made for the forest shelter. Only four of the poor fellows reached
it, and of these some were wounded. The thick underwood now screened
them from the volley that whistled after them, and they were soon safe
from the effects of rifle-shots in the tangled forest depths.

Meanwhile the clouds had been gathering black and dense, and soon rain
and sleet began to fall, accompanied by a fierce gale. Two small parties
of Kalmucks were sent in pursuit, while the others began to prepare an
encampment under the cedars. The storm rapidly grew into a hurricane,
snow falling thick and whirling into eddies, while the pursuers were
soon forced to return without having seen the small remnant of the
gallant band. For three days the storm continued, and then was followed
by a sharp frost. The winter had set in.

No further pursuit was attempted. It was not needed. Nothing more was
ever seen of the four Circassians, nor any trace of them found. They
undoubtedly found their last resting-place under the snows of that
mountain storm.

_THE SEA FIGHT IN THE WATERS OF JAPAN._

On the memorable Saturday of May 27, 1905, in far eastern waters in
which the guns of war-ships had rarely thundered before, took place an
event that opened the eyes of the world as if a new planet had swept
into its ken or a great comet had suddenly blazed out in the eastern
skies. It was that of one of the most stupendous naval victories in
history, won by a people who fifty years before had just begun to emerge
from the dim twilight of mediaeval barbarism.

Japan, the Nemesis of the East, had won her maiden spurs on the field of
warfare in her brief conflict with China in 1894, but that was looked
upon as a fight between a young game-cock and a decrepit barn-yard fowl,
and the Western world looked with a half-pitying indulgence upon the
spectacle of the long-slumbering Orient serving its apprenticeship in
modern war. Yet the rapid and complete triumph of the island empire over
the leviathan of the Asiatic continent was much of a revelation of the
latent power that dwelt in that newly-aroused archipelago, and when in
1903 Japan began to speak in tones of menac