icers were impatiently awaiting us. They gave me the warmest of
welcomes, and would not even permit me to tell them my story, the
lieutenant who had rescued me assuring them that he had already obtained
all the particulars and could tell it as well as I could. I was
accordingly at once turned over to the care of the ship's surgeon, and
made comfortable in the sick bay, the squadron immediately resuming its
cruise.

Now that the tension of looking after myself was relaxed, a reaction set
in, with high fever, and for the next four days I was really ill, with
frequent intervals of delirium. But there were no complications of any
kind, and by the end of the sixth day I was so far recovered as to be
able to dress and sit up for an hour or two. Everybody aboard the
_Idzumi_ was exceedingly kind to me, as kind indeed as though they had
been brothers; and this fraternal feeling of kindly interest was not
confined to the _Idzumi_ alone, Kamimura himself informing me, with a
smile, that it had become quite a habit for the other ships to signal an
inquiry as to my condition, every morning. As the officers of the ship
came off watch, they came tiptoeing along to inquire after me; and if I
happened to be awake, and the doctor permitted it, they would sit and
chat with me for half an hour or so before retiring to their cabins, by
which means I gradually acquired all the missing links in the story of
the squadron's abortive cruise.

From these conversations I gathered that after the squadron and the
_Kinshiu_ parted company off Gensan, while we in the transport headed
for Iwon, the squadron proceeded toward Vladivostock, being much delayed
by a dense fog, through which it steamed at half-speed, each ship towing
a fog buoy as a guide to the ship immediately following, though, even
with this assistance, keeping touch was only accomplished with extreme
difficulty. Thus they proceeded until, by dead reckoning, they arrived
at a point seventy miles south of Vladivostock, when, the weather being
much too thick to permit of fighting the enemy, even should the two
fleets blunder together, Admiral Kamimura decided to retrace his steps,
arriving at Gensan two days later. Here the Japanese consul boarded the
_Idzumi_ and imparted to the Admiral the startling information that on
the previous day four strange warships, accompanied by a couple of
destroyers, had appeared off the port, the warships being later
identified as those constitutin