It was an awful night for the Russians. After dark they had extinguished the fires lighted by the enemy's shells, and in some cases got collision mats over the leaks. The dead were committed to the sea, the wounded collected and cared for. For more than an hour they were allowed to hold their course uninterrupted, and the lights of the Japanese fleet were disappearing far astern. After all, Vladivostock might be reached. But just after eight o'clock the throb of engines, the hurtling beat of propellers, came sounding through 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.