My friend's profession necessitates his being always on the look-out for smugglers; in fact, he had undertaken this nocturnal expedition with the object of ascertaining if there was any truth in the reports he had heard about strange vessels being seen at night in this particular locality. Therefore, he watched the vessel narrowly, and soon perceived that she was signalling with the shore. When the signalling had gone on for a little while, my friend decided that it was time for him to interfere, and accordingly he steamed towards the mysterious intruder. He never overtook it, however.
As soon as its sensitive ears heard the swish of the approaching launch, the strange barque shot off at eighteen knots an hour — my friend is prepared to swear it could not be less — the red fire inside being reflected in the smoke from half a dozen short funnels. The stranger was a torpedo-boat, and, far out, she joined nine or ten dim, unlighted shapes which were far too large to be torpedo-boats; and, soon after, the whole fleet disappeared.
I asked my friend to ascertain who had been signalling from the shore that night, and he went to the signal station to inquire, They told him that it was a man from the Japanese Consulate.
Meanwhile the good people of Port Arthur were disturbed in their sleep or in their revels on the night of February 8 by a sound of firing, which they put down of course to practice. Mr. Plan^on has since told me that on hearing this firing he simply turned on his side and went to sleep again, so convinced was he that it was nothing in particular. Next morning, however, there was wild excitement in the air. The Japanese had torpedoed three battle-ships in the darkness. The fleet of the Mikado was outside. The place was going to be bombarded. If the people had been excited before, they were doubly excited now. They crowded in the street facing the harbour, straining their eyes towards the horizon. The Viceroy must have told his entourage to show themselves in public in order to calm the excitement, for soon Mr. Plan^on, Colonel Versheening, the Mayor, General Stoessel and other notables rode through the streets speaking affably to everybody and smiling mysteriously when questioned about the affair of the night before, as if to intimate that it was all a little surprise which they themselves had sprung on the town. Towards midday, however, when the guns began to boom again, a sickening fear clutched at every heart, and when a Japanese shell fell plump in the street nearly opposite Clarkson's, making a hole that you could bury a mule in, wild-eyed panic seized upon the people. It was as if the Judgment Day had come.
One of the first shells fell in front of the office of Baron Ginsberg, whose timber concession on the Yalu had had a good deal to do with the war.
On the very day before the bombardment, the baron, who, although a Jew of humble origin (his real name is Mess), and whose right to call himself baron is doubted, is a personal friend of Admiral Alexeieff, declared that there would be no war, and evidently believed what he said.
The departure of the Japanese inhabitants looked bad, but did not damp the cheery optimism of the great Jewish capitalist, who opined that it was all " bluff."
When a large shell fell in front of his office, partly demolishing it and making a big hole in the ground, the baron changed his mind about it being all " bluff," and suddenly disappeared from view. He was afterwards discovered cowering in the corner of a thirdclass railway carriage by one of his own employes, who was so affected by the sight that he jumped into the same train, and went off with practically nothing but his pocket-book and the clothes he had on his back. The number of sudden disappearances of this kind was large.
The prosperous restaurant keeper with the big moustaches also vanished after the first shell, having evidently gone underground, for he as suddenly reappeared again a few days after, as did also his doorkeeper, a stout phlegmatic individual, who helped you on with your overcoat, accepted tips without hesitation, no matter how large the amount, and seemed the most unlikely man in the world to be disturbed by anything. But it was the dignified people that bolted on this occasion with the most undignified haste. A week later I met some of them at Chin-wan-tao, a hundred miles from Port Arthur, still running, still breathless. I don't believe some of them have recovered from the shock yet.
I do not blame them, however, after having heard, from one of those who did not bolt, a description of his sensations on feeling that in all Port Arthur there was no longer any protection for him, that the strongest roof could resist the shells as little as a paper screen, and that a projectile might fall anywhere.