The North Pacific

About half an hour before he was missed, that afternoon, he had slipped over the ship's side into a Chinese sampan, or small fishing-boat, which had come alongside to dispose of its fare of fish. Fred tossed a coin to the Chinaman who was seated in the stern and pulled a broad piece of matting over himself in the bottom of the boat. All this was done in less time than it takes to tell it. If any of the Osprey's jackies saw it, he said nothing. The sympathy of a sailor always goes with a runaway, whatever the reason for the escape may be.

The owner of the sampan, understanding from a gesture of his unexpected passenger that the latter wished to reach the shore without detection, immediately cast off his painter and worked his small craft skilfully and swiftly toward the docks of Chefoo. As soon as the Osprey was hidden by another hull – that of a British man-of-war – Larkin threw off the matting gladly enough and sat up. Presently he caught sight of a large junk, just hoisting its sails. It was heavily loaded, though the character of its freight could not be ascertained.

Fred pointed to the junk, and the oarsman turned his boat toward it. A moment later he was alongside.

"Where are you bound?" he called out to the skipper.

Fortunately the latter could understand English.

"Port Arthur," he replied, but not loudly.

Fred held up a coin. The man nodded, and the correspondent jumped on board, taking in his hand the small leathern gripsack he had brought from home.

The junk proved to be coal-laden, and the captain (and owner), having made sure that no Japanese vessels were in sight, was about to make a dash for Port Arthur, where he knew he would obtain high rates for his cargo.

It soon appeared that he had underrated the watchfulness of the blockaders, for within less than an hour from leaving port the men on the junk perceived a torpedo-boat destroyer bearing down on them. The skipper calculated his chances of safe return, and decided to "keep all on" for Port Arthur. In twenty minutes the black hull of the pursuer could be plainly made out, and soon after the sound of a gun was heard. The Chinamen working the junk got as far down out of danger as possible, in their clumsy craft, and Fred followed suit. He had no desire to be killed or maimed, nor did he wish to be captured and sent back to Tokio.

He was beginning to despair of the successful issue of his adventure, when a shout from the sailors called his attention to an object dead ahead. It was a column of dense black smoke arising from the sea in the direction of Port Arthur.

A cheer rang out from the Chinamen, as they perceived the smoke. There could be no doubt that it arose from a Russian war-ship, coming out under full head of steam to meet the destroyer.

Again the Japanese gun spoke, and this time the shot struck the water within a few feet of the junk.

"They've got our range," said Fred to himself grimly. "Trust the Japs for scientific work, when it comes to firing! I might as well improve the time, though!" And drawing his note-book from his pocket he began to take notes.

The junk kept on its course, foaming through the water under pressure of her great sail until the lee rail almost went under. Clouds had arisen in the west and it was nearly dark. A search-light on the mainland flared out suddenly, and a broad ray wavered over the waves until it picked up the Japanese boat, now within less than a mile of the fleeing junk. A deep boom sounded ahead. The Russian had at last spoken, and a big lump of steel swirled through the gloom, over the great triangular sail. The Chinese craft was between two fires. The Japs shrewdly kept her in line with themselves and the enemy, so that the latter dared not fire low. The destroyer fired steadily and fiercely, hulling the junk more than once. It was evident that a crisis was at hand.

Crash! A solid six-pound shot struck the stern of the labouring White Dragon, knocking her rudder to bits and killing the skipper, who had remained bravely at the helm. The junk yawed wildly and fell off before the wind. The sailors shrieked and ran to and fro, calling upon their gods to help them.

Another shot, and the mast went by the board. But the Russian cruiser was now close at hand and engaged the Japanese boat savagely.

Fred was watching the fight and looking for a chance to hail the Russian, when a splinter struck him and he was knocked headlong into the sea.

CHAPTER XIII.

WYNNIE MAKES A BLUNDER

Edith and Wynnie found Tokio rather lonely after the two young men had gone. It was the loveliest season of the Japan year; the trees were pink with blossoms and every street and square carpeted with fallen petals. Save in the government offices and at the railway stations there was little outward sign of war. All over the empire almond-eyed girls and women were working quietly for the soldiers, arranging bandages, picking lint, preparing scrap-books for the hospitals; but this made no stir. The rickshaw coolies pattered along the city streets and groups of strangers clustered about the shop-windows as in the time of peace. Now and then the tap of a drum was heard, and a column of dark-faced little soldiers passed at quickstep, their faces set with stern resolve, the sunrise flag floating before them. For a moment the crowds turned to look, then returned to their money-making or sight-seeing or shopping.

Señor Bellardo became more attentive to the Blacks on the very day when the midshipman and correspondent sailed away in the Zafiro. He attached himself naïvely to their party, even when they went to the War Office to ask for the latest news.

Larkin and Bob Starr, in pursuance of their purpose of showing their friends everything worth seeing in Tokio, had introduced the American girls, as well as Colonel Selborne, to the high government officials, who had welcomed the strangers with utmost courtesy.

About a week after the departure of the young men the Blacks called at the War Office, Bellardo following meekly in their train. As it happened, no one was in the room but the orderlies, who gave the party to understand that their superiors had been called out, but would return soon.

"Oh, we can't wait," said Edith impatiently.

"But it's our last visit, really a call of ceremony, girls," protested their adopted uncle, as he called himself. "It will hardly be courteous to leave without seeing one or both of these gentlemen who have been so polite to us."

"I'll write a line and leave it for them," said Wynnie impulsively. "We've lots to do, Uncle, and we can't waste time, you know, in our last day in Tokio. They may not come back for hours."

She took the chair of one of the officials, looked about for pen and ink, and began writing hurriedly on a blank sheet which lay on the top of a pile of documents. The orderlies gazed in bewilderment at the pretty vision of the girl in a picture hat, occupying the chair of their venerated head of department.

Before Wynnie could finish her note, however, the owner of the chair appeared, with profuse apologies for his delay. Wynnie crumpled up the slip of paper upon which she was writing, and dropped it into the waste-basket as she rose to pay her respects to the war official. The rest of the party advanced and joined in the mutual farewells and regrets. As they stood by the desk, Edith was surprised to see the Spaniard stoop, take Wynnie's half-written note from the basket, and bestow it in an inner pocket. "How sentimental!" she thought, rather contemptuously. She started to speak to her sister about it, on the way home, but something in the street took her attention, and she forgot all about it.

The Blacks had expected to leave next morning for Yokohama, where they were to go on board a steamer for Hawaii and San Francisco. In the disturbed state of affairs on the Chinese coast, Colonel Selborne had concluded not to risk inconvenience or danger, and to give up the rest of the trip. Early in July the whole party would be at home once more. But their plans were interrupted by an unforeseen and astounding incident. It was no less than the detention of all four by the Japanese Government.

They had hardly reached the hotel, on their return from the War Office, when a dapper little gentleman stepped up to the Colonel and said a few words in a low tone.

"What!" exclaimed the American. "Impossible. We start for home to-morrow morning. Edith," he added, turning to his young guests, who were just behind with Señor Bellardo, "this man says we are not to leave the hotel till further notice. Special orders from the War Office!"

"Why, what can be the reason? What has happened?"

The Japanese officer shrugged his shoulders and murmured an apology. "A document of great value has been lost," he said. "It is necessary to detain every one who has visited the office during the afternoon. It is mere form. Honourably do not be annoyed – a thousand regrets for your inconvenience!"

Colonel Selborne understood Japanese methods well enough to know there was a hand of iron under the velvet glove. He submitted with what grace he could muster.

"Search our rooms," he said. "It is absurd to suppose – "

"Ah," interrupted the emissary from the War Office eagerly, "we suppose nothing. It is mere form. To-night, to-morrow, next day, you will surely be at liberty to depart. If you are put to extra expense by remaining longer than you had planned the Government will repay all."

At the Colonel's urgent request the rooms were searched, and of course nothing was found. The little man withdrew, walking backward and apologising over and over; but he did not leave the hotel. He sent a message to the Office and informed the Blacks that nothing further could be done until the next day.

It was ten o'clock in the evening when the recollection of Wynnie's half-written note flashed across Edith's mind. She almost flew to her uncle's door and rapped. The good man had not retired; he was too much annoyed and troubled to sleep.

"Uncle, Uncle, I've something important to tell you. It may be a clue!" And she described Wynnie's act of throwing away the piece of paper and its subsequent recovery by the Spaniard.

"I thought he just wanted a bit of Wyn.'s writing," she said, her lip curling a little. "It may be there was something deeper in it."

"But the paper was perfectly blank; there was nothing on it but two or three lines I had written when General Kafuro came in," said Wynnie, who had joined them.

"Did you look on the other side of the sheet?" demanded Colonel Selborne.

"Not once! And it may have been the very document they miss! Oh, what a foolish, foolish girl I was! I saw the paper lying there on a heap of other sheets, and supposed – oh, the General must have turned it over so that no one would see it when he was called out, expecting to return in a minute! That was it, I know it was – and it's all my fault!" Wynnie hid her face on her uncle's shoulder.

"There, there, dear, it was a natural enough mistake, and you really meant to do a kind and courteous thing in writing our regrets," said the Colonel, patting the brown head.

"Do you know what the missing paper was, sir?" asked Edith.

"It was a sketch of a portion of the fortifications at Sasebo, with specifications below – all in very fine handwriting and pale ink. I must see the officials at once," added Colonel Selborne, looking for his hat.

"Why not hunt up Señor Bellardo first?" suggested Edith eagerly. "Now I think of it, he must have left us just as you were first notified, and he didn't come near us the whole evening."

"I noticed that," said Wynnie, "and was glad of it. I can't bear him, and never could."

"Do you remember how Mr. Larkin looked at him?"

"Yes, and he said – "

"I can't stop, my dears," broke in the Colonel. "I'll enquire for the Spaniard at once and find him if he is in the hotel. Do you know where his lodgings are in Tokio?"

Neither of them knew. Singularly enough, the man had never mentioned his lodging-place. He always dined at the hotel.

Colonel Selborne found the Japanese official on the verandah, and at once took him into his confidence. They made enquiries and looked into every public room in the hotel. Bellardo was not there.

"Leave the matter now with me," said the secret-service man quietly. "My men are near, and I will continue the search. In the morning you shall know the result, and I hope to be able to relieve you from further surveillance."

Early the next morning the report was made by the chagrined but ever-polite officer. The bird had flown. Señor Bellardo's lodgings were known – as were those of every stranger in the city – to the police. They were visited before midnight, and found empty. The police in every seaport were notified by telephone and ordered to arrest a tall, well-dressed man, claiming to be a Spaniard, with dark complexion and black beard and moustache. His clothes were described, as well as a certain shifty look in his eyes. His bearing was that of one who had been trained in a military or naval school.

Colonel Selborne and his party made affidavits before the American consul, telling everything they knew about the matter. As General Kafuro remembered leaving the paper on the very pile from which Wynnie had taken her sheet, there seemed to be no doubt that Edith's story accounted for the theft. Other papers of value had been missed from time to time since the war broke out, and it was believed at the Office that the so-called Spaniard was a dangerous spy in the pay of the Russians.

General Kafuro congratulated Ethelwyn on having forced the man's hand, and, at the request of the consul, declared the American party free to leave Tokio whenever they wished.

Colonel Selborne lost no time in availing himself of the permission and, with his wife and the two young ladies, sailed from Yokohama two days later.

On the evening of the same day, when the City of Pekin was heading eastward with the Americans on board, a small sailboat put out from a village on the west coast of the island. Besides the sailors it had one passenger – a gentleman with smooth face, light complexion, and red hair. The boatmen had agreed, for a large sum, to land him at the nearest point in Korea, unless they should previously fall in with a Russian war-ship. The latter contingency actually came to pass, as the boat was driven northward by a southerly storm, and picked up by one of the Vladivostock squadron, then cruising for prizes.

From Vladivostock, where he was safely landed on the following day, the red-haired gentleman proceeded by rail to Harbin Junction, and then southward to Port Arthur, now nearly cut off by Nogi's troops. Trains, however, were still running regularly between the beleaguered port and Moukden.

Strangely enough, the hair of the mysterious gentleman was now rapidly turning dark. By the time he reached Port Arthur, it was quite black. A stubbly beard and moustache, too, began to show themselves on his sallow face. The man spoke Russian brokenly, and used English when he could. Never a Spanish word came from his lips, and the Barcelona estates proved veritable castles in Spain, fading from his memory.

As the man passed up the street of Port Arthur, under escort of a corporal's guard, he laid his hand triumphantly on his breast. In an inner pocket, beneath it, reposed a sheet of rice paper, on one side of which were scrawled a few lines, in a girlish handwriting. On the other were drawings of moats, counterscarps, and a medley of fortifications, followed by vertical lines of delicate Japanese characters.

"Take me at once to General Stoessel's headquarters," said the sallow-faced man. "I have important information for him. Here is my pass from the War Office at St. Petersburg."

CHAPTER XIV.

THE ATTACK OF THE "OCTOPUS"

Since the Stone Age, when long-haired men, half brutes, fought with battle-clubs made by lashing a rudely shaped lump of stone in the cleft end of a club, and with arrows and javelins tipped with hammered flint, through all the successive generations of fighters, human ingenuity has been exercised to its utmost to devise new implements of warfare, and new defences to protect against them.

A long stride was taken when the first elaborately carved, bell-mouthed cannon roared at Cressy and Poictiers; another when iron balls were substituted for stone, and still a third when the idea flashed upon some belligerent inventor to make his iron shot hollow and transform them into explosive shells and death-dealing shrapnel.

From shells to torpedoes was an easy transition, and the torpedo-boat became necessary, duly followed by the torpedo-boat destroyer. At the same time the armour of the largest fighting ships was increased in thickness from two or three inches to a foot, over the vital parts of the battle-ship and cruiser, the primary batteries of which now included huge rifled guns throwing a steel projectile of well-nigh half a ton's weight.

The torpedo is a terrible but uncertain weapon. The modern search-light makes daylight of the darkest night, and renders the approach of a torpedo-boat within striking distance exceedingly difficult. If detected, the boat is doomed, for a concentration of fire from the larger ship beats the necessarily small assailant to death in a moment. Moreover it is by no means sure that the torpedo will do its work when launched at the enemy, even if it succeeds in piercing the wire net that is suspended to entangle it at a safe distance from the hull of the vessel attacked.

Summing up all the obstacles to successful torpedo attack, it may be reckoned that only one in twelve reaches its mark, explodes, and accomplishes its purpose.

It remained for the twentieth century to produce a terrible fighting-machine – often foretold but never perfected until the Russo-Japanese war – which should approach the enemy unseen, discharge its torpedo with careful aim at the most vulnerable part of its huge adversary, and, while the latter was floating in fancied security on the open sea, strike a blow which should be instantly fatal. Such is the marvellous submarine torpedo-boat of this day and generation.

The idea of a boat that shall move under water and discharge its missile at a hostile ship is by no means a new one. In 1776 a young man named David Bushnell, of New Haven, Connecticut, constructed a submarine boat resembling two "turtle-backs" screwed together. She was so small that only one man could occupy her. Air was supplied to last half an hour. The "crew," who was expected to work by hand the propelling screw, was also supposed to be able to pump in and out water ballast to enable her to descend to the desired depth, to maintain the craft on an even keel when submerged, and to detach two hundred pounds of ballast weights in order to rise again to the surface. An explosive mine containing one hundred and fifty pounds of gunpowder was to be towed alongside until the bottom of the enemy's ship was reached, when, the mine having been fastened to the hull, a clock-work arrangement, set by the operator, would explode the charge. Nothing practical resulted from the young Yale man's scheme, but it is evident that his boat was the original model for every submarine torpedo-boat which has since been invented.

In 1800 Robert Fulton, turning his attention from steam engines for a while, modelled a boat which was a considerable improvement upon Bushnell's, but, like the latter, failed in practical use.

During our Civil War several essays were made at submarine warfare, the Confederates taking the initiative. One of these submarines actually blew up a Union man-of-war, but was itself demolished, with its crew of nine men. Every great navy in the world now reckons a number of submarines among its available forces.

One of the most dangerous and powerful of these deadly destroyers at the time of the breaking out of the Japanese war was the Octopus, launched at night, with great secrecy, near the naval station of Sasebo. Her length was eighty feet, diameter eleven feet, displacement (when submerged) one hundred and thirty-nine tons. When she was running light, or "awash," the twin-screws, operated by triple expansion engines worked by steam, gave a speed of fifteen knots, with a minimum endurance, at this speed, of twelve hours.

To drive the craft when submerged a battery of storage cells supplied an electric current to operate motors sufficient to give a speed of eight knots for at least six hours. Her armament consisted of five automobile torpedoes and two expulsion tubes, which opened through her black prow like the nostrils of some hideous sea-monster. She was able to sink to a depth of twenty feet below the surface within one minute after the order to dive was given. When she was submerged three feet the pilot obtained a view over the water by means of a camera lucida in a tube that projected above the surface.

When Jules Verne wrote Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, in 1873, his Nautilus was deemed by the reader untaught in naval constructive history a wild creation of the author's fancy, like his passenger-car shot to the moon from an enormous cannon. To-day there is not a naval commander who would not look grave and consider an immediate withdrawal of his ship when told an enemy's submarine was cruising in his neighbourhood.

In the face of open danger, visible to eye and ear, no officer of the navy blenches. The submarine is out of sight. It may be within a hundred yards of the ship when the report is brought. A man who will stand up against a wild beast or a band of savages without a tremor will turn white and shriek with terror if, when he is in the water, the cry of "Shark!" is raised. The shark betrays its presence by its black dorsal fin above the surface of the sea. When the fin disappears the danger increases, becomes terrible; the fear of the swimmer in the vicinity of that black, unseen peril overmasters him.

The submarine sinks, like the shark, to attack. Its gleaming back, surmounted by the small, round conning tower, disappears amid a swirl of foam. A single staff at the stern betrays its presence for a moment; then that, too, glides beneath the surface. Not a man on the battle-ship but shudders at the thought of that hidden monster under the waves, driven by the skill and hatred of the human brain.

Only tried and absolutely reliable men are chosen for the crew of the submarine. They must be ready to endure extreme discomfort and hardship and must hold their lives in their hands. A well-aimed shot from a war-ship, or a defect in the delicate machinery of the boat, and all is over. A submarine never is wrecked; it sinks, with all on board; it is obliterated.

The Japanese have been among the first to realise the terrible effectiveness of this formidable engine of war. No one outside a handful of men near the Mikado's throne knows how many submarine torpedo-boats are included in the Japanese navy, nor where they are stationed. Japanese naval officers and men form an ideal body from which the crews of these boats are to be chosen. In conflict with the enemy, whether on land or at sea, they reckon their lives as nothing. They seek eagerly for a glorious death at the hands of the foe, and when that is denied them and defeat is inevitable they prefer to die by their own weapons, or by leaping into the sea, rather than prolong what would be to them a life of disgrace.

Oto Owari was appointed, on the 11th of April in this eventful year, to the command of the submarine Octopus, then docked, under a concealing roof, at Sasebo. Three nights later he went on board with a picked crew at midnight, and the Octopus, first gliding out of the dock, and gathering speed until she reached open water, suddenly stopped her engines and began to sink, inch by inch. In one minute a dark spot on the sea, and a patch of foam, indicated the top of her conning tower; and a moment later she was out of sight. In the act of sinking, her prow was toward the west.

Early on the morning of April 13th, the Japanese fleet made a demonstration in the direction of Port Arthur. Always ready to accept a challenge while there was a shot in the locker, the Russians steamed out to meet them. There was but a brief exchange of battle courtesies. The Port Arthur ships were far out-numbered and out-metalled, and Admiral Makaroff, on the Petropavlovsk, signalled for his squadron to retire.