WHERE were we to land? This was the question that exercised our minds from the beginning to the end of our voyage. To land at Taku-shan and attack Haicheng and Liao Yang in the north, was one of the suggestions made. To go straight to the Gulf of Pechili and land at Iakao was another. A third suggestion was that we were to land at a certain point on the coast of Liaotung, and then go south to attack the stronghold of Port Arthur. Of course, all the views and opinions advanced were changed according to the direction in which our bows pointed. But at last, when we saw on the chart that we were sailing south of the Elliot Isles, all agreed at once that our destination was some spot leading to Port Arthur. What excitement and joy when we saw the transports and the guard-ships proceeding together toward that spot! After a while we began to notice a dark gray, long, slender piece of land dimly visible through thick mist. That was indeed the Peninsula of Liaotung! the place where, ten years before, so many brave and loyal sons of Yamato had laid their bones, and the field of action on which our own bodies were to be left! Since the previous evening the sky had been dark, the gray mist and clouds opening and shutting from time to time, the wind howling at our mast-heads, and the waves beating against our bows flying like snowflakes and scattering themselves like fallen flowers. Behind us there was only boundless cloud and water. Beyond those clouds was the sky of Nippon! The enthusiastic Banzais of the cheering nation, the sound of rosaries rubbed together in old women’s hands, the war-songs coming from the innocent lips of children—all these seemed still to reach our ears, conveyed by the swift winds.