I do not know the feeling on board the other ships, but in the _Suvoroff_ we were cheerful and eager for the fray. Anxious, of course, we were, but not so over-anxious as to worry. The officers went their rounds, and looked after their men more than usual; explained details, talked, and found fault with those immediately under them more than was their wont. Some, the thought suddenly occurring to them, put their keepsakes and the letters which they had just written into the treasure chest for safety. “He evidently means to leave us!” said Lieutenant Vladimirsky, the senior gunnery officer, pointing to a sailor who was busy rummaging in a bag. “What! made your preparations for going already?” “I?” said he in amazement; and with a grin--“Yes--I am quite ready!” “Look here!” said Lieutenant Bogdanoff, the senior torpedo officer, who was a veteran of the former war and had been wounded at the capture of the Taku forts--“To-morrow--or rather to-night--you’ll please go to the office and get your accounts made up!” This humour had no effect. “And haven’t _you_ a presentiment? _You’ve_ been under fire before,” asked a young sub-lieutenant, coming up, with his hand in his pocket, in which was evidently a letter destined for the treasure chest. Bogdanoff got annoyed. “What do you mean by a presentiment? I’m not your fortune-teller! I tell you what! If Japanese guns begin talking to us to-morrow you will feel something soon enough,--but you won’t feel anything before then!”[8] Some more officers approached. Times without number we had hotly discussed the question,--would we meet the whole of the Japanese fleet at Tsu-shima, or only part of it? Optimists asserted that Togo would be misled, and would patrol to the North to look out for us, as the _Terek_ and _Kuban_ had on the 22nd gone round the eastern shores of Japan endeavouring to attract as much attention there as possible.[9] Pessimists declared that Togo was as well able as we were to understand the conditions, and would know that a single coaling was not sufficient to enable us to steam all round Japan; we should have to coal again. And where? We were no longer in the tropics; the weather here was anything but reliable, which meant we could not count upon coaling at sea. Take shelter in some bay?--but there were telegraph stations, and, of course, intelligence posts, everywhere. Togo would learn of it in good time, so what would he gain by hastening northward? Even if we succeeded in coaling at sea and slipped unnoticed into one of the Straits, we couldn’t conceal our movements there, thanks to their narrowness. And then--submarine and floating mines, sown along our course, and attacks by torpedo-boats, which would be easy even in broad daylight!