vich_,
heading for the harbour, evidently in a sinking condition, and we had
the satisfaction of knowing that by that night's work we had put at
least one of the Russian battleships _hors de combat_. Her crew were
much too busy to pay any attention to us; and a quarter of an hour later
we were beyond the zone of that awful, merciless fire, and were heading
south-east for Mokpo, where we had been ordered to rendezvous.

We did not, of course, at that time know the extent of the damage that
we had succeeded in inflicting upon the Russian fleet; but trustworthy
information reached us later, that the _Tsarevich_ had been struck aft,
the torpedo blowing a big hole in her hull and flooding her steering
compartment to such an extent that her captain had been obliged to beach
her to prevent her from sinking. The _Retvisan_ had been struck
amidships, and a large hole blown in her pump compartment, rendering it
necessary that she also should be beached in order to save her. Those
two battleships constituted the _Kasanumi's_ share of the bag; and very
pleased we were with ourselves when the news became known, since those
two ships were far and away the best in the Russian fleet, and the loss
of them, even if it should prove to be only temporary, was a very
serious matter for the Russians. But, in addition to these, the
_Pallada_, cruiser, and the volunteer cruiser _Angara_ were also hit,
and were obliged to be beached to save them from foundering.

Thus we had done not at all badly; although some surprise was felt that,
considering the favourable circumstances under which the attack was
made--by which I mean our unsuspected approach, and the time which
elapsed before the searchlights actually found us--we had not done a
great deal more. For Divisions 1, 2, and 3, which had attacked the
Russian fleet, consisted in all of ten destroyers, each of which had
discharged two torpedoes--twenty in all. And of those twenty, only
four, apparently, had got home. It was not a result to be proud of.
But I had a suspicion that I could have put my finger upon the
explanation, had I been asked to do so; and it would have been this: The
night was bitterly cold; so cold, indeed, that the spray froze as it
fell upon us, and the weather was simply atrocious; the result being
that by the time the flotilla arrived in Port Arthur roadstead, the
limit of even Japanese physical endurance had been almost, if not quite,
reached. Most of our deck han