"There beneath the cliff I hear a little battery of rapid firing guns, very small and elegant. There are 12,000 bullets speeding on their errand in sixty seconds. They are destined to defend our shores against the landing of an enemy. The orgy is at its height. The shells are bursting around us like fireworks at a feast. A whistle, a hiss, and a sharp ringing noise, as they rush through the air, then smoke and a smell of burning, while the sand dances from the earth. I turn from the battery and see a terrible picture. In the midst of the men a shell bursts. One soldier is disemboweled, and another is wounded in the head, a third is shrieking in the height of his delirium. One steel cannon is broken to pieces as though it were straw. An awful picture, with blood--blood everywhere." [Sidenote: Further Naval Movements] At last, at two o'clock, the inferno ceased. A great calm succeeded to the thunder of the guns and the screams of the shells, and the civilians of Port Arthur slowly and timidly returned to their ruined homes. The separate divisions of the Japanese fleet rejoined one another, and after the most destructive bombardment yet inflicted upon the land defences of the Russian stronghold, they quietly steamed away southwards. While these events were taking place at Port Arthur a detached squadron of the Mikado's cruisers had proceeded northeast to Dalny, or Talienwan, as it used to be called, and destroyed the quarantine buildings erected by the Russians on the Sanshan Islands. Outside that port the _Takasago_ and the _Chihaya_ scouted the western coast of the entrance to Port Arthur in the hope that the bombardment would draw Admiral Makaroff's ships into the open; but no enemy could be found and the two cruisers then retired in the wake of the main squadron. [Sidenote: Hoist With its Own Petard] It was not long before a Russian vessel fell a victim to the mines laid by the Japanese destroyers at the harbor entrance on the night of March 9th. On the 16th the _Skori_, a torpedo-boat destroyer of the newest pattern, was entering the channel when she struck upon a contact mine and was blown up. Out of her crew of fifty-five men, only four were reported to have been saved. [Sidenote: Another Attempt to Bottle]