coast which at once
construed the appearance of suspicious-looking ships on May seventh as
signs of a Japanese attack, and they immediately opened fire on the four
Japanese cruisers and on the transport steamers. But before this fire
had any effect, the hostile fleet changed its course to the North and
the four mortar-boats began their attack. They approached to within two
nautical miles and opened fire at once.

What was the use of our gunners aiming at the flat, gray arches of these
uncanny ocean-tortoises? The heavy shells splashed into the water all
around them, and when one did succeed in hitting one of the boats, it
was simply dashed to pieces against the armor-plate, which was several
feet thick, or else it glanced off harmlessly like hail dancing off the
domed roof of a pavilion. The only targets were the flames which shot
incessantly out of the mouths of the hostile guns like out of a
funnel-shaped crater.

By noon all the armored domes of the Port Townsend batteries had been
destroyed and one gun after another had ceased firing. The horizontal
armor-plates, too, which protected the disappearing gun-carriages
belonging to the huge guns of the other forts, had not been able to
withstand the masses of steel which came down almost perpendicularly
from above them. One single well-aimed shot had usually sufficed to
cripple the complicated mechanism and once that was injured, it was
impossible to bring the gun back into position for firing. The concrete
roofs of the ammunition rooms and barracks were shot to pieces and the
traverses were reduced to rubbish heaps by the bursting of the numerous
shells of the enemy. And all that was finally left round the tattered
Stars and Stripes was a little group of heavily wounded gunners,
performing their duty to the bitter end, and these heroes were honored
by the enemy by being permitted to keep their arms. They were sent by
steamer from Seattle to the Canadian Naval Station at Esquimault on the
seventh of May, and their arrival inspired the populace to stormy
demonstrations against the Japanese, this being the first outward
expression of Canadian sympathy for the United States. The Canadians
felt that the time had come for all white men to join hands against the
common danger, and the policy of the Court of St. James soon became
intensely unpopular throughout Canada. What did Canada care about what
was considered the proper policy in London, when here at their very door
nec