r heavy guns sufficiently to reach us, would boldly engage the forts
with our quick-firers, and even with rifle-fire, picking off any gunners
that were foolhardy enough to expose themselves, and not unfrequently
dismounting or otherwise putting out of action a few of their lighter
guns. It was the good fortune of the _Kasanumi_, on one occasion, very
shortly after our return, to strike one of the Russian 11-inch Canets,
mounted in the fort between Golden Hill and the inner harbour, fair and
square upon the muzzle and blow it clean off, with a shell from our
12-pounder; but such successes as these were of course very rare. These
engagements between our destroyers and the Russian forts were immensely
exciting, and afforded a most agreeable and welcome change from the
monotony of mine-laying, for when we undertook such an adventure we
never knew whether or not we should emerge from it scatheless. The
operation of getting in close under the cliffs, undetected, was of
course hazardous enough to make the attempt irresistibly fascinating;
but it was the getting away again after the alarm had been given and all
the enemy's searchlights had been turned upon us, when the excitement
reached its height; for, of course, the moment that we were far enough
away from the shelter of the beetling cliffs to enable the Russians to
train their big guns upon us, they would open fire upon us for all that
they were worth, and then it became a case of dodging the shells. It
was then that our ingenuity was taxed to the very utmost, twisting and
turning hither and thither as we ran at full speed into the offing,
always endeavouring to make a turn in the most unexpected direction
possible at the precise moment when we anticipated that the guns were
being brought to bear upon us. And that, on the whole, we were fairly
successful was pretty conclusively evidenced by the small amount of
damage which we sustained. Indeed, our most serious mishap about this
time in those waters arose from a totally different cause. One of our
officers, a certain Commander Oda, had invented a particularly deadly
kind of mine, which the Japanese Government adopted, and which they
named after the inventor. A few days after my return to the waters of
Port Arthur, Oda himself was engaged upon the task of laying some of his
mines in the outer roadstead, when one of them somehow exploded, killing
the captain of the ship and eighteen men, and wounding Oda himself and
sev