t moment
preparing to lower their boat. The _Yahiko_ passed on, and so did the
destroyer, the latter vanishing in the darkness to seaward, while the
_Yahiko_, the centre of a very galaxy of bursting shells, staggered on
in a sinking condition, and went down at the very moment when, with
astounding skill and coolness, her skipper had brought her to the exact
spot for which she was intended.

Then it was seen that, either through some miscalculation or, more
probably, because the Russians had widened the channel, there still
remained an unfilled gap, wide enough for a single ship to pass through!
It was a most vexatious thing, after all the trouble that we had taken
and the ordeal which we had passed through; but it could not be helped;
it was the fortune of war.

Stay, though! Why should it not be helped? All that was needed was
another steamer--or perhaps two steamers--to fill the gap, and the thing
was done. And, hang it all! I was game to do the job myself to-morrow
night, when the Russians would least expect me.

But, to do the job effectually, it was highly necessary to know the
exact width of the gap, and the depth of water in it; and now was the
time to ascertain those particulars, while we were on the spot. I would
do it!

Then came the very practical question: How? What means had we to take
soundings, or to measure the gap between the sunken _Fukui_ and the
_Yoneyama_? I looked about me, and found that all we had with us was
the boat's painter, a piece of rope some seven or eight fathoms long,
which might serve as a sounding-line, if only we had a sinker of some
sort, which, unhappily, we had not. Then one of the men in the boat,
realising what I wanted, informed me that, while preparing the boat for
lowering, he had chanced to glance into the locker in the stern-sheets,
and had noticed a fishing-line there. Would that be of any use? Of
course it would; the very thing for sounding, at all events. We had
that line out in double-quick time, cut away the hooks, and then
proceeded to knot it at exact intervals corresponding with the length of
the boat's after-thwart. Precisely what that length might be, we could
ascertain afterward.

But, how to measure the width of the gap? There seemed to me to be but
one way to do it, and that was by taking the length of our boat herself
as a unit of measurement; not a very satisfactory method, I admitted,
yet better than nothing. So thereupon we set to work.