I shall not try to describe my sensations when I first saw the Japanese so close. I could not if I tried. I was thunderstruck. A tremendous electric shock seemed to go through me. I dropped the telescope. My breath left me. The deck sank beneath my feet. I was as one alone in interplanetary space, receiving an appalling supernatural revelation.
Millions of thoughts shot through my head every second. The first one was, of course, "It is war!" The second was, " Japanese torpedo-boats were in amongst us last night, and damaged these two battleships."
After pinching myself and smiting my head, and rushing a couple of times up and down the deck to make sure I was awake and sane, I turned to have another look at the torpedoed vessels, and noticed how the men were gathered together with white, scared faces on the deck. There seemed for the moment to be no captain, no officers, no order. The sailors were no longer important parts of a formidable fighting machine: they were a mob — a silent, scared mob — looking with terror towards the abyss from which the monsters of the night had emerged.
Some of them, it is true, still seemed to go about their duties in a mechanical manner, and I particularly remember seeing one man throw water over the side.
Finding that the captain had been shouting at me for the last five minutes, I entered into conversation with him. We agreed that these Japanese vessels could not be supported by the Japanese fleet. They were simply a few prowlers that had come with the torpedo-boats to do as much damage as they could and then rush off again. The Russians would be out after them directly. In true Anglo-Saxon style we minimised the miracle that had happened. We also left it to be inferred from our remarks that we had suspected all along that something like this was bound to occur.
No satisfaction was expressed by anybody on board the Columbia at the terrible blow the Russian Navy had received. There was something so pathetic in the helplessness and in the unnatural position of these tremendous engines of war, which had been so suddenly disabled, that we all remained looking on sadly,
in silence. It was like being an eye-witness of the downfall of Napoleon.
A Danish pilot employed by the Port Arthur Harbour Board now swirled past us in a launch. We asked him if the two battle-ships at the harbour mouth had been torpedoed.
" Three have been torpedoed," he shouted back; " there's the third on your right, the Pallada."
And, sure enough, we had been commenting previously on the suspicious list to port which that big cruiser had, and on her awkward appearance, which made her look as if she were aground. Everybody had had his doubts about her, but nobody had dared to express them. The English hatred of exaggeration had prevented him.
Before he was out of earshot the pilot had bawled to us to clear out at once, as the whole Japanese fleet was coming up, and, if we did not move immediately, we should find ourselves right in the line of fire.
The captain bellowed back that we had been told not to leave the port, and that any attempt to move might draw on us the fire of the forts, but by this time the pilot-boat was churning up the sea three miles away.
Meanwhile the Japanese cruisers had made a very long, leisurely survey of the Russians, and had then gone away slowly, whereupon the whole Russian fleet weighed anchor and started in pursuit. It is a singular instance of the effect of habit that, on weighing anchor, the Russian sailors very carefully cleared all seaweed, sand, etc., from the anchor chain, as if they could not have postponed that operation to a more convenient time.
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Before steaming out, the Russian ships hastily threw overboard bedding and furniture, which were at once seized upon by eager Chinese " sampan " men. I noticed one man paddling ashore with something that looked like a ping-pong table, and several went very far out in their quest for booty.
These amphibious beings seemed to be the only people who were not thunderstruck by the appearance of the Japanese. To them it was simply " Yeebin whalai" (The Japanese have come back), just as if ten long years had not elapsed since the Three Nations had made them haul down their flag from Golden Hill.
These Chinese boatmen all disappeared very quickly, however, when the shells began to fall. But no shells fell just then, for the Japanese cruisers had gone away, with the Russians after them. This was at about nine o'clock.
Admiral Togo probably wanted to lure the enemy outside and to fight them in the open; but he did not succeed, for, on sighting the Japanese fleet, the Russians all returned to the harbour.