, " and we put them together here at the rate of two every month, so that every month Japan waits she'll have two additional torpedo-boats to reckon with."
Beside us in the outer roads, lay the Rurik, in comparison with which we looked very humble indeed. Little think'st thou, O Imperial Rurik! awesome in all thy warlike panoply, that, a twelvemonth hence, that Sunrise flag shall send thee flaming to the bottom of the Japan Sea!
My first impressions of Port Arthur city were not favourable. The sea-front was covered with hillocks of coal flanked by enormous piles of vodka casks; the day was hot, the air was full of dust, and the reflection of the sun from the buildings and the bare stony hills made walking very disagreeable. The streets were crowded, principally with soldiers and sailors, most of whom wore enough medals to drown them in case they fell into the water; and the izvoshcheeks that tore past every moment made it sometimes risky to cross them. I was surprised to find this love of rapid motion in a half Oriental people like the Russians, although Gogol might have prepared me for it.
After having rescued my luggage from an onrush of jabbering coolies, I tried to find a room in one of the hotels, or " nomeras " as they are called, but it was difficult work.
These " nomeras," I should explain, were merely Chinese houses, whitewashed and with glass windows let into each of the very small, stuffy and dirty rooms into which the interior was divided. The windows were never opened, and, though they never seemed to admit air, they certainly admitted large quantities of fine dust, so that no matter how often a room was cleaned, it always remained dirty. I went from one of these hotels to another, wearily looking for a room, but in the first three I met with such an indignant " nyet " that I wondered what on earth I had done.
It could not be that there was anything wrong with my manner of asking, as my interpreter was a Russian who had long been resident in Port Arthur, so I simply put it down to ill-breeding.
In the last available "hotel" — a place called " the Efeemoff," from the name of its proprietor — I found a small, dirty, ill-ventilated chamber, for which I paid three and a half roubles a day. This did not include lighting, water, towels, soap, bedclothes, etc. etc., so that I paid as much per day for this wretched i hole as I would have paid for a room in the Carlton. The chamber was so small that there was hardly space for the bed in it, and the door was secured on the outside by a padlock and hasp, which completed its resemblance to a stable. Most of the other rooms seemed to be occupied by young Jewesses, who were beautiful but had no visible means of support. Their frequent cries of " boyka! boyka /" indicated that a Chinese " boy " was supposed to attend on us, but though on several occasions I listened to his voice, his celestial features I never had the honour of gazing on during all the time of my stay in the " Efeemoff."
I had to go outside for my food, as there was none to be had on the premises, and, as no " samovar " in Port Arthur was heated before ten or eleven o'clock in the morning, I quickly contracted the pernicious habit of late rising.
All the Port Arthur hotels, save one, were kept by Armenians, and all of them sheltered young damsels of the same type as those in the " Efeemoff." Whenever I mildly hinted to Russians that in England it would not be considered respectable for all the hotels in a town to contain such guests, they would jump with amazement at my Puritanism. "Why, you should have seen the place six months ago! " they would invariably cry. " It's a monastery now, compared with what it was then! "
It was just the usual luck of the Russians, I suppose, that two fine new hotels were completed in New Town just in time to serve as targets for the Japanese.
The reader already knows that there were an old Port Arthur and a new Port Arthur. The old Port Arthur was simply the Chinese village which existed n when the fortress was garrisoned by Celestial troops. Nearly all the Chinese houses remained, but their interiors had, like the "nomeras," been altered so as to make them serve as shops and European residences.
The shape of the town was, roughly, that of a triangle — the base, which fronted the bay, being about two hundred yards long, and consisting mostly of small houses built in the European style, and the sides meeting a few hundred yards inland. A continuation of one of these sides contained the most important shops and commercial offices in the town, and led eventually to the new Chinese town, several miles distant.