When this two-fold disaster became known, the Russians were naturally elated and even filled with renewed hope. Its true proportions, too, were greatly exaggerated, and in the expectation that the Japanese would be seriously hindered in their landing operations on the coast of Liao-tung, General Kuropatkin countermanded the evacuation of Niuchwang, which had already partly taken place, and his forces once again occupied that port. However, as we have already stated, the loss he had sustained did not lessen the grip maintained by Admiral Togo upon Port Arthur. His weakened condition did, indeed, at a later period give the Russian fleet, after it had been patched up with infinite pains and difficulty, an admirable opportunity to break through the cordon, but the attempt was made with singular feebleness, and the admiral in command took his ships back to the refuge of the harbor without effecting anything. On the other hand, the destruction of the _Hatsuse_ and the _Yoshino_, by necessitating the withdrawal of some ships from Admiral Kamimura, who was guarding the Korean Straits, indirectly gave the Vladivostock squadron a chance of raiding the coast of Japan for some time with impunity, of destroying a great deal of merchant shipping, and incidentally of bringing about the most serious international complications, in which Great Britain, as the chief trading country of the world, was the power principally involved. [Illustration: A SKIRMISH ON THE MANCHURIAN RAILWAY.] [Sidenote: The Vladivostock Squadron]