the night from all sides. On the sea black, low
objects were rushing along with foaming phosphorescent wakes trailing
behind them. Bugles ran out the alarm; crews rushed to quarters;
searchlights blazed out, and the small quick-firers that were still
serviceable mingled their sharp ringing reports with the crackle of
machine-gun fire. The sea seemed to be swarming with torpedo craft. They
appeared and disappeared in the beams of the searchlights, and the surface
of the water was marked with the long white ripples raised by the rush of
discharged torpedoes. Loud explosions, now here now there, told that some
of them had found their target, though in the confusion and the rough sea
there were more misses than hits. The "Sissoi Veliki," which had been on
fire in the action, and pierced below the waterline, had a new and more
serious leak torn open in her stern, the rudder was damaged and two
propeller blades torn off. But she floated till next day. Several ships
received minor injuries, but kept afloat with one or more compartments
flooded. But the effect of the attack was to disperse the fugitive Russians
in all directions.

When it began Nebogatoff was at the head of a line of ships in the old
battleship "Imperator Nikolai I." In the confusion only three of the line
kept up with him, the much-battered "Orel" and the "Admiral Apraxin" and
"Admiral Senyavin." The "Orel" had no searchlight left intact. The
"Nikolai" and the two others did not switch on their searchlights, and kept
all other lights shaded. The remarkable result was that as they moved
northwards through the darkness they were never attacked, though more than
once between 8 p.m. and midnight they saw the enemy's torpedo craft rushing
past them. The ships with searchlights drew all the attacks.

Admiral Enquist, with his flag in the "Oleg," and followed by the "Aurora"
and "Jemschug," had run in amongst the remains of the transport flotilla at
the first alarm, narrowly escaping collision with them. Then he turned
south, in the hope of shaking the enemy off, but came upon another flotilla
arriving from that direction. He had some narrow escapes. The look-outs of
the "Oleg" counted seventeen torpedoes that just missed the ship. Having
got away, he tried more than once to turn back to the northward, but each
time he ran in among hostile torpedo-boats, and saw that beyond them were
ships with searchlights working and guns in action, so he steered again
south. At l