What was the use of our gunners aiming at the flat, gray arches of these uncanny ocean-tortoises? The heavy shells splashed into the water all around them, and when one did succeed in hitting one of the boats, it was simply dashed to pieces against the armor-plate, which was several feet thick, or else it glanced off harmlessly like hail dancing off the domed roof of a pavilion. The only targets were the flames which shot incessantly out of the mouths of the hostile guns like out of a funnel-shaped crater. By noon all the armored domes of the Port Townsend batteries had been destroyed and one gun after another had ceased firing. The horizontal armor-plates, too, which protected the disappearing gun-carriages belonging to the huge guns of the other forts, had not been able to withstand the masses of steel which came down almost perpendicularly from above them. One single well-aimed shot had usually sufficed to cripple the complicated mechanism and once that was injured, it was impossible to bring the gun back into position for firing. The concrete roofs of the ammunition rooms and barracks were shot to pieces and the traverses were reduced to rubbish heaps by the bursting of the numerous shells of the enemy. And all that was finally left round the tattered Stars and Stripes was a little group of heavily wounded gunners, performing their duty to the bitter end, and these heroes were honored by the enemy by being permitted to keep their arms. They were sent by steamer from Seattle to the Canadian Naval Station at Esquimault on the seventh of May, and their arrival inspired the populace to stormy demonstrations against the Japanese, this being the first outward expression of Canadian sympathy for the United States. The Canadians felt that the time had come for all white men to join hands against the common danger, and the policy of the Court of St. James soon became intensely unpopular throughout Canada. What did Canada care about what was considered the proper policy in London, when here at their very door necessity pressed hard on their heels, and the noise of war from across the border sounded a shrill Mene Tekel in the white man's ear? * * * * *