The Russian fleet divided into two parts. One part ran parallel to the shore on the right-hand side of the entrance, the other parallel to the shore on the lefthand side, all the vessels, — even the torpedoed battleships— firing continuously at the Japanese. On the whole, they seemed to manoeuvre clumsily. Some of the war-ships revolved without changing their position, and the whole fleet was evidently placed at a disadvantage by reason of the cramped space and of the consequent danger of running ashore. The Novik and some other cruisers ran out pluckily until within a short distance of the enemy, whose torrents of shell sometimes hid them from our view. The Poltava and the Diana were wrapped in flames.
I must confess, however, that I was not calm enough just then to watch the fight with the amount of attention necessary to give a very detailed report of it. The reason of this was that we were running parallel to a line of Russian cruisers, which drew on us the fire of the Japanese. We were so close to the beach that I could have thrown a stone ashore, and were still going south. I wondered vaguely why we had not yet anchored, but was afraid to ask the captain, as he was now absolutely unapproachable. Besides, what did it matter? We could no more expect to escape those thick-falling shells than a man standing outside in a thunderstorm can expect to escape the drops of rain.
The skipper had now hoisted his biggest British ensign to the mast-head. " D — n them," said he in a surly tone, speaking more to himself than to us, and jerking his thumb upwards, while in his eyes there burned a lurid light which I took at the time to be the light of insanity, " d — n them, let them fire on that! "
This remark seemed to me to be one of those childish but infinitely mystic and significant things which, all unconsciously, dying soldiers sometimes say. Did the captain imagine that there was some potent, storm-quelling magic in the ensign that had won the over-lordship of all the seas? Did he think, for drowning men grasp at straws, that the Japanese might refrain from firing on that flag out of friendship or the Russians out of fear? If the former were the case he was mistaken, for the Japanese projectiles continued to fall very close. One fragment of shell made a small hole in the deck forward, another fragment tore the flag itself.
Before the engagement began I had been reflecting with exultation that there was a chance of my getting to Chefoo before any other war-correspondent; but when the shells began to sing through the air and raise huge pillars of water before, behind, and close to both sides of the ship, I forgot all about that matter,
or if I reflected on it at all, it was only to curse my luck at falling in a fight which was not mine. For I regarded myself as already doomed. I thought of writing a farewell letter to one dear friend; but the reflection that letters never find their way from the bottom of the deep made me stop after the first few words.
What annoyed me most was the uselessness of my death. To die for a great cause is glorious. To die as a combatant on board one of those war-vessels would be an honour.
I felt, oddly enough, that if I had died as a regularly attached correspondent on board one of the Russian battle-ships, I would have been satisfied. Even if I had knowingly, willingly, sailed into the fray on board the Columbia, the prospect of death would not have been so horrible. But it was by the merest accident that I had got caught in this whirlwind of great events, that I had got mixed up in this gigantic contest of empires. Any fool might have done the same. I ardently longed to get outside the danger-zone so that I could bid my friends good-bye with a sad, sad smile, and then sail back again to meet my fate.
The only bright spot in this gloomy outlook was the conviction that my paper would manfully lie for me, would say that with eagle eye I had foreseen all that was going to take place, and had steered straight for the heart of the battle. I also reflected with melancholy satisfaction that I had certainly got the better of those Chefoo shipowners who had insisted, a few days before, that in case I chartered one of their vessels, even at a most exorbitant rate, I would have to agree that the captain would be at liberty to turn back in case he saw any of the rival fleets on the horizon.
But in truth my death was going to be miserable. A non-combatant, struck by a stray shell while running away from the fight on board a harmless merchant steamer — Good Heavens, what a fate!