The attention of those on board the Columbia was temporarily withdrawn from these great events by the appearance of a naval doctor, who declared the quarantine at an end, but could give us no information as to whether we could leave or not. He said he would go ashore and inquire.
The Russian fleet returned at about ten o'clock, and, immediately after, there took place a flagrantly impossible event. Sixteen Japanese war-vessels, six of them clearly battle-ships, appeared in a long dark-grey line on the horizon. They appeared so suddenly that they seemed to have risen from the sea, or to have materialised from the mists of the morning. They were only five miles off, and at the mast-head of every one of them a Japanese naval flag shouted defiance. I felt that I was present at the inception of an historical event not less momentous than the fall of Constantinople. For the first time in the history of the world the pagan war-flag of the Sun Goddess was opposed in field of battle to the banner of the Cross.
I could not take my eyes off these menacing warships. They were not unfamiliar objects. I had lived under that flag myself. I had seen those battle-ships at Hakodate, Nagasaki, Ujina, Kobe. In the lovely Inland Sea they had seemed to me to be merely masses of ugly machinery, desecrating the landscape. Here, off the bleak, fortified headlands of Port Arthur, they harmonised perfectly with the sternness of nature. Evidently they had not been built for Miyajima or Shikoku. These floating fortresses had been built for Port Arthur Bay.
Things now looked desperate for us on board the Columbia, and our captain took down the quarantine flag and ran up the signal, " Will you give me permission to leave? "
The Russian soldiers we had with us got a little excited when they saw the quarantine flag taken down, and asked for an explanation; and the skipper, who was fast losing control of his temper, wanted to throw them overboard, rifles and all, but I restrained him and tried to pacify them as best I could. I also tried to distract their attention by pointing out to them the Japanese vessels on the horizon. They laughed at my simplicity, and said that these were Russian vessels.
No answer was signalled to the Columbia, but after a while a naval officer came aboard and requested us to " move." The captain furiously demanded if he might " move to Chefoo," but in a menacing tone the officer said no, he had better not attempt to leave Port Arthur until permission had been signalled to him from the shore. He might, however, have the kindness to move just a little out of the way, as a cruiser wanted to take up its position in the place the Columbia occupied. Then, after saying something in a low tone to the soldiers, the naval officer left the ship.
At this unpropitious moment, there approached us a "sampan" in the bows of which stood a gentleman whose putties, Norfolk jacket and bored sang froid all proclaimed him English. He informed the captain that he was a British military officer and would like to be taken to Chefoo; but the captain was in such a rage at his signals not being answered and at the mess he had got into generally, that he acted as Hotspur once did under similarcircumstances, and not only refused to entertain the proposition but told his countryman, in the most violent language at his command, to begone instantly. The other looked for a moment as if he would come on board in spite of us, but at this juncture our Russian soldiers resumed their old trick of pointing their rifles at the " sampan " man, who thereupon retreated with great rapidity.
I must frankly say that I was glad this English officer did not get on board, for, if he had, I would never have made the journalistic " scoop " I did; but at the same time it is a pity, from a general point of view, that he was unable to accompany us, as, owing to his superior technical knowledge, he would doubtless have made the most of the splendid opportunity we had of seeing the battle.
While the captain was giving orders to get under way, a sudden wild idea that it was all a mistake, a regrettable misunderstanding, flashed across my mind. "Let us be reasonable," I said to myself, "the whole thing is too dramatic to be true. Lurid events like this don't happen in these prosaic days. To-morrow we'll all be laughing about this scare, in the ' Saratoff.' The collision theory is right after all. Russia and Japan have arranged their little differences. The Japanese fleet is here on a friendly visit."
And my eyes sought the Japanese line-of-battle for some confirmation of this view. And the Japanese line-of-battle spoke.
At that instant — it was then a quarter-past eleven — there was a big bright flash from the starboard side of the Mikasa, then about five miles distant, and, immediately after, a vast, invisible Something rushed over the mast-head of the Columbia with the mighty sound of a railway train hurled into space, and every one on board, from the cook who had deserted his galley to the captain who had not yet left off swearing, ducked suddenly and reverentially.
It was the first shot of the Russo-Japanese War! The table had been overturned, the diplomatic chessboard kicked across the room, and one of the armed players had jumped to his feet and smitten the other on the face!