The sailing of the Baltic fleet had been again and again announced, and as often postponed. Vice-Admiral Rojestvensky knew that he was surrounded by spies, and more than half guessed that danger was awaiting him when once the home sea should have been left behind. At length, on the 21st of October, the great battle-ships and cruisers weighed anchor in earnest and started for Port Arthur. If that stronghold was to be saved, the relieving force could no longer be delayed. The Japanese were tightening their grip daily, and with an enormous sacrifice of life were taking position after position. Kouropatkin had made a vain attempt to march southward and succour the beleaguered fortress, and had been beaten back. Relief could only come by sea. It was believed at St. Petersburg that Stoessel could hold out until February, when Rojestvensky's fleet would be at hand to effect a diversion and open the harbour. Slowly and majestically the ponderous ships moved onward, the lookouts, doubled in number, watching every suspicious-looking craft, the officers scanning the sea, from the bridges, with powerful marine glasses. Just after sunset the fleet entered the North Sea and turned their massive prows toward the south. Between latitude 54° 10' and 57° 24' North, and longitude 1° and 6° 7' East (from Greenwich), a huge sand-bank lies under the waters of the North Sea, midway between England and Denmark. It is called the Dogger Bank, and affords extensive fishing-grounds which are frequented by all sorts of craft, from a wherry to a thousand-ton steamer. Here the Hull fleet set their trawls, and, with lights twinkling from bow and mast-head, toss and swing at their anchors through the long hours of the night. Every pilot in the United Kingdom, and on the coasts of the adjacent European states, knows of these trawlers and plots his course to avoid them in crossing the North Sea. The admiral of the Baltic fleet either forgot them entirely, or recklessly took the risk of their lying in the path of his heavier ships. As the night--an unusually dark one--of October 21st closed in, the Hull fishermen were anchored as usual over the Dogger Bank. There were half a dozen or more of them, and before midnight their number was increased by one--a low, black hull like their own, which brought up just north of the main group without attracting attention. The lights of the _Kiku_--for the newcomer was no other than the disguised destroyer--were made to conform exactly to those displayed by the trawlers. No one could have taken her for a war-ship, with her big fourteen-foot Whitehead torpedoes waiting to be unleashed behind their canvas tompions. Far away to the northward a light twinkled in the darkness; another, and another. "Slip the cable," ordered Oto quietly, not daring to recover his anchor lest the noise of the chain and pawls should be heard. "Clear decks for action!"