In the Winter Palace of Tsarskoe-Selo a slightly built young man with a dark beard and pale, irresolute countenance paced the marble floor nervously. He had seen his proudest fortress in the East reduced to submission; his armies, whose watchword had been, "Russia never withdraws," driven back, beaten, overwhelmed by the soldiers of despised Nippon; his war-ships tortured by shot and shell, by enemies upon the sea and beneath its waters; and he had read report after report of their loss and of the death of countless thousands of men, "at the Czar's command." And now his new fleet, brought together and built up at enormous expense, but ill-manned and ill-managed, had all but finished its long voyage, and had entered hostile seas. Upon this fleet hung all his hope of retrieving the disasters of the war. One great naval victory, and Russia would be wild with joy. The past would be forgotten and the name of the Little Father once more revered. The Baltic fleet halted, for coal and provisions, off the friendly port of Saigon, the leading city of the French possessions in Lower China. Nebogatoff, with a third squadron, was hurrying across the Indian Ocean to join Rojestvensky, who now anxiously awaited his approach. The sympathies of the French ports were but half concealed; the needed supplies came in abundance. Japan calmly but sternly remonstrated at this apparent breach of neutrality, and France was obliged to warn the Russians off her coast. Nebogatoff, however, had succeeded in adding his ships to those of the larger squadrons, and Rojestvensky, with his entire fleet coaled and provisioned, was now ready for the decisive battle. Week after week passed, and still no smoke of the hostile armada appeared on the northern horizon. Compelled to change his station day by day, the Russian moved nervously here and there in the China Sea inviting attack. He sent out reports that he was about to essay the narrow passage west of Formosa, either east or west of the Pescadores; he harboured his fleet under the lee of the great island of Hainan; he professed an intention to thread the dangerous passages north of Luzon and make a dash across the open Pacific, for the friendly port. Still the wily Japanese remained silent, unheard, unseen, until the supplies of her harassed, perplexed, impatient enemy once more diminished and her bunkers were again nearly empty.