tunate flagship.

With the disappearance of the flagship, the Russian fleet resumed its
way toward the harbour, the _Pobieda_ now being at the head of the line.
But scarcely had she started her engines when an enormous pillar of
flame, water, and smoke enveloped her amidships. She, too, had come
into contact with one of our mines, but, fortunately for her, with much
less disastrous results than those attending the destruction of the
_Petropavlosk_. She instantly listed, showing that she was severely
damaged, but beyond that nothing further happened, so far as we could
see, except that the second explosion appeared to have created a perfect
panic among the Russians, who immediately opened a terrific fire with
every gun, big or small, apparently at random, for we could see the
shots throwing up great jets of foam in the water all round them.
Later, we learned that when the second explosion occurred, some one
aboard one of the ships yelled that the fleet was surrounded by Japanese
submarines, discharging torpedoes; hence the frantic firing at the
water. Of course the assertion was groundless, since, as a matter of
fact, the Japanese had no submarines; but it is not very surprising
that, with two disasters, one following so closely upon the heels of the
other, the Russians should jump to the conclusion that they had been
attacked by submarines; for it must be remembered that we had carefully
educated them into the belief that our mines were quite harmless.

The loss of the _Petropavlosk_ was a terrible misfortune for the
Russians, for she was one of their most formidable ships; being armed
with four 12-inch guns of the most recent design, mounted in pairs in
her two big turrets; with, as a secondary battery, twelve 6-inch
quick-fire guns, eight of which were mounted in pairs in four small
turrets placed, two on either beam, behind 5-inch steel armour, while
the other four were in casemates similarly protected. She had six
torpedo tubes, and we conjectured that she probably had a torpedo in
each tube which exploded at the time of the disaster.

As for the _Pobieda_, our spies were able to ascertain that the mine
which damaged her had breached three of her big compartments and some
smaller ones, so that it was only with the utmost difficulty she was got
into harbour and beached in time to save her. Also one set of her
Belleville boilers was so severely damaged as to be rendered useless.
Consequently she, too, was put o