was too serious, and despite
collision mats and pumps the craft continued to settle until at length,
recognising that all efforts were useless, he ordered all hands aboard
his own ship, and cast off, the _Kasanumi_ foundering almost before the
_Akatsuki_ could back off clear of her.

Ito made no attempt to attack the ships in Port Arthur roads
single-handed, but at once shaped a course for the Elliot Islands,
running clear of the fog half an hour later. Arrived at our base, he
lost no time in having me conveyed ashore to the hospital, where, as
already recorded, I lay for a week in a state of alternating delirium
and coma before I recovered my senses.

The doctors assured me that I was making a splendid recovery; yet to
myself my progress appeared to be horribly slow, and it was certainly
not accelerated by the knowledge that while I was lying there helpless,
big events were happening which had all the appearance of leading up to
still bigger events in the near future. For instance, there was the
second sortie of the Russian squadron from Vladivostock, in the middle
of June, lasting over a fortnight, during which it inflicted great loss
and damage upon the Japanese. It was a most risky thing to do, and must
certainly have resulted in disaster had not poor, unhappy Admiral
Kamimura been morally chained down, and prevented from taking effective
measures against the raiders, by a stringent order that he was to hold
the Strait of Korea at all costs. Yet, such is human inconsistency,
notwithstanding the above stringent order, which bound the unfortunate
admiral hand and foot, and effectually precluded his pursuit of the
raiding ships, he was so severely blamed by "the man in the street" for
the damage done that a mob actually attacked and wrecked his house!
This, of course, was most unjust and cruel treatment of a thoroughly
capable and zealous man who, hampered though he was, did all he could to
bring the raiders to book, and indeed, but for a sudden change of
weather at a critical moment, would probably have brought them to action
and given them a severe punishing.

Then, there was the abortive sortie of the Port Arthur fleet, three days
after the destruction of the _Kasanumi_. True, the ships were only at
sea for about twenty-four hours, and did nothing, narrowly escaping
capture only by Togo's over-eagerness to engage them, thus discovering
himself to the Russians in time to allow the latter to make good their
re