"In one of his scrapes again!" he said, tossing the paper over to his sub. "We shall have to depend on the Associated for a while!" CHAPTER XXVI. "THE DESTINY OF AN EMPIRE." On the morning of the twenty-seventh of May a light fog hung over the Yellow Sea and the Straits of Korea. Gulls sailed in leisurely fashion above the dull-green surface of the water, or dropped with sudden scream as their keen eyes discerned some floating scrap of food; but the supply was scarce, for few ships had of late passed that way, and the sea, ordinarily alive with junks and steamers and modern sailing craft, was as deserted as some far-off Polar bay which no adventurer's keel had yet ploughed. The gulls seemed uneasy, in spite of the desolateness of the broad expanse of heaving swell. They called to each other with warning cries as if some hidden danger were near. What lay concealed beneath those fleecy folds of mist, which already began to mellow to golden in the rays of the rising sun, and to drift southward before the light breeze which was springing up? What would be revealed when the white curtain should lift? For many weeks, since the day when the Russian fleet passed the Straits of Malacca and had been reported from Singapore, the naval forces of Japan had seemed hardly more than a myth. "Where is Togo?" was the question on every lip. "Will he proceed southward and meet the enemy in the China Sea? Will he lie in wait for them between Formosa and the mainland--that mine-strewn sea where the fair Isles of the Fishermen, bristling with fortifications, bait the open trap? Will he lure them eastward, past the Philippines, to the Pacific, and attack them there, or will Japan allow her enemy to take refuge in her one port of Vladivostock, there to be brought to bay and pulled down as were her proud battle-ships and cruisers at Port Arthur?" Back and forth under the sea flashed the questions and the appeals for news; but Japan gave no answer; her admiral was dumb. He and his ships disappeared from view. Newspaper correspondents burdened the cables with surmises, but no news. Every naval expert had his opinion to give--at space rates--but home editors and the great, waiting, impatient public clamoured in vain for authentic information. At the War Office in Tokio a few men, small of stature and suave in demeanour, bowed and smiled as of old. They were gentle, courteous, mild, and inscrutable. They received and sent despatches without a gleam of emotion in their dark faces. They saw, in these despatches the North Pacific, with each bay and port and headland, the approaching Muscovite enemy and the leashed fleet of Japan, as a crystal-gazer holds a far-off scene in the hollow of his hand. One day their smiles faded, for a moment, and their eyes grew stern as they dictated a new order. They were crushing an empire.