y of the fire on either side. The
pandemonium of sound was such that the human voice could no longer make
itself heard, and the officers on the bridges were obliged to give their
orders in dumb show. Even the shrieks of the wounded went unheard in
that hellish babel of sound. As the distance between the contending
ships decreased one began to realise the terrific character of the
forces employed by man for the destruction of his fellow-man, for now it
could be seen that the _Tsarevich_, ponderous as was her bulk, literally
and visibly heeled and swayed under the tremendous impact of the enemy's
projectiles. But we were by no means getting things all our own way,
for when the fight had been raging for about half an hour, the _Mikasa_
was struck upon her fore barbette by a 12-inch shell which shook the
ship from stem to stern as it exploded, and put the barbette, with its
two 12-inch guns, out of action for a time through the jamming of its
turning machinery. The damage, however, was speedily repaired, and
meanwhile the fight went on with ever-increasing fierceness and
determination.

At length the superiority of the Japanese fire began to make itself
apparent. The speed of the Russian ships steadily fell, and it could be
seen that many of them, particularly the battleships, were in great
distress. Especially was this the case with Vitgeft's flagship, the
_Tsarevich_, upon which much of the fire of our own battleships had been
concentrated. She had a great hole in her bows, about ten feet in
diameter; her anchors were shot away; and her hawse-pipes had vanished--
to enumerate only her more apparent injuries. Then a 12-inch shell
struck her fore-turret, wrecked its interior and, as we subsequently
learned, glanced off, entered the conning tower, killed everybody in it
except two, destroyed the compass, and killed the man at the wheel, who,
as he fell, jammed the helm hard a-starboard, causing the ship to swerve
sharply out of the line and wheel round in a wide circle, completely
upsetting the formation and seriously imperilling many of her sister
ships. A few seconds later another shell fell aboard her, hitting the
foot of her foremast and causing it to totter, though it did not
actually fall. This same shell, we afterward learned, literally blew
Admiral Vitgeft to atoms, also seriously wounding several of his staff,
and throwing the ship into a perfect chaos of confusion.

This was the beginning of the end; sh