e that if ever the worse came to the worst, he would undertake to get
the extra knot out of the ship, although it would be at the peril of
what he elegantly termed "a general bust-up in the engine-room." So now
I called to him down the voice-tube, begging him to speed her up as far
as he dared; and a few minutes later I noticed that we were gaining upon
the _Iwate_, our next ahead, while the _Asama_, our second astern, was
also stoking up. Thereupon I signalled the flagship that we had speed
in hand, if required, and the order was at once given to increase speed
by half a knot.

It was not very long afterward that we had ocular demonstration of the
value that extra spurt of speed might prove to be; for while we were
still plugging along in the direction of the firing, we suddenly sighted
two craft coming slowly in our direction. They proved to be the
_Kasagi_ escorted by the _Chitose_, making for the Japanese coast, the
former being holed below the waterline and making so much water that it
was doubtful whether it would be possible to save her. She signalled
that matters were going badly with the protected cruisers, eleven of
them being then hotly engaged by twelve of the enemy, one of which was a
second-class battleship, while three others were battleships of the
third class! Admiral Dewa, who was on board, concluded his
communication by urging us to hasten to the rescue.

The steadily increasing distinctness with which the sound of the firing
reached us, proved that we were rapidly overhauling the contending
squadrons, and some twenty minutes later we sighted the rearmost ships
on both sides, blazing away at each other "hammer and tongs." Our own
cruisers were to the southward of the Russian line, therefore Kamimura
led his force to the northward of the enemy, thus placing the latter
between two fires, at the same time signalling us to concentrate our
fire upon the four Russian battleships, which we did with a vengeance,
and within five minutes we were all enveloped in a roaring tempest of
flame, smoke, and bursting shells.

But the precision of our fire was infinitely superior to that of the
Russians. They fired at least three times as rapidly as we did, but
whereas every one of our shells reached its mark, the bulk of theirs
flew wide. They were rapidly growing demoralised, and when the fight
had been in progress some twenty minutes, their line suddenly broke up
into little groups of twos and threes and ma