No doubt my singular position there, in the outer roads of Port Arthur, contributed to create this feeling. The night was dark, for the moon was in her last quarter and would not appear before daylight. The only seaward lights twinkled on board the widely scattered battle-ships. Against the black sky on either side stood out a blacker blotch of land, land that looked dark and lonely enough, at that time of night, to be the abode of lost souls.
Perhaps the spirits of dead Japanese, of the sons of daimyo and ronin and samurai who have perished on these bleak hill-sides, are watching there till their brethren come back. Be still, O restless spirits of the mighty dead! your ten years' vigil will soon be ended. You have not long to wait. Behold! the hour of your deliverance is at hand! Ere midnight your countrymen will be in the outer roads!
Behind me, the great black bulk of Golden Hill showed more clearly against the sky, and a few of the lights in the town were clearly visible, the rest being cut off by the intervening peninsula of Tiger's Tail. The glow of the city, faintly reflected in the sky overhead, looked as hospitable as the glow of a household fire, but my present banishment from that familiar hearth made me feel like an outcast. Moving backwards and forwards along the narrow space of town which our position commanded, were the lights of •' izvoshcheeks."
When the singing had ceased, a sense of infinite sadness came over me, for what I had heard was not the triumphal crash of a conqueror's chorus, it sounded more like a Litany for the Dying. And such, indeed, it was. It was a Litany for a great Navy, whose long death-agony was to begin that night, for an historic flag which was soon to pass away for ever from the Pacific.
And all this time, Togo's relentless destroyers are coming nearer. THREE-QUARTER-SPEED! On his conning-tower, in oilskins and sea-boots stiff with ice, stands the lieutenant, peering into the gloom profound. At the wheel stands the coxswain, silent and dripping. At last they can make out the massive silhouette of Golden Hill.
In the sky overhead they can see the faint reflection of Port Arthur and city. At a distance that seems infinite, our lights show up before their starboard beam. SILENCE! LIGHTS OUT! As you value your lives, no flaming from the funnels! Nearer still, they can see the long, ghostly arms of our searchlights groping for them in the dark like the arms of some silent, blind, gigantic octopus. The white wash boiling away astern fills them with apprehension. The churning of the screw, the rhythmic throbbing of the engines, sound like thunder in their ears.
I then returned to the saloon and sat down to finish the newspaper article of which I have already spoken, and in which I had laid it down as a fundamental proposition that the Japanese would never attack Port Arthur.
What increased my feeling of confidence, though it ought not to have done so, was the fact that the
Russians seemed to think it unnecessary to make anyconsiderable use of their searchlights. Previously they used to annoy the officers of merchant steamers by the way in which they blinded them with their flashlights, either until they were out of sight on the way to Chefoo or until they had entered the inner harbour of Port Arthur.
On leaving Port Arthur for Chefoo the previous Friday I had seen for myself that a light was kept flashing on us till we were out of sight; but on our return we were not, I was told, subjected to such a long-continued scrutiny, and on Monday night no light had been flashed on us at all up to the time I have now reached.
When it was nearly half-past eleven a feeling of drowsiness, partly due to ennui, partly to a heavy supper, came over me; and, as everybody else save the officer on watch had retired for the night, I decided to follow their example.
The Chinese " boy " who had sat up with me to turn out the lights was asleep on a chair, and, without waking him, I passed noiselessly from the saloon into the outer air, for my cabin was an outside one.
Before entering my room I took a last glance at the inky shore. A profound trance seemed to hold sea and land. A sharp northerly wind was blowing outside, but here, in the shelter of the mountain, there was not even the wash of a wave. Now and then a moving light in the distant town showed me that stray " izvoshcheeks " were still passing through the streets of Port Arthur, but otherwise the fortress-city was dark as the mouth of a sepulchre.
Far out at sea a solitary searchlight on the Angora swung lazily backwards and forwards, as if worked by a man who was half asleep.