At last, driven to desperation by the refusal of the inscrutable, invisible foe to emerge from the obscurity where he lurked, Rojestvensky set the signal to advance. He hoped that the Japanese had been misled by rumours of his escape to the open Pacific, and that by a direct course northward through the Korean Straits he could reach Vladivostock, now so few miles away, after his weary seven months' voyage from the Baltic. The fog of the early morning was dense. No scout-ship of the enemy was visible. It would take time to notify Togo of any movement of his adversary. Forming in double line, with strict orders for silence throughout every ship, the great flotilla got under way and started northward through the early morning mist. In days gone by the leader of an armed force could obtain information of the manoeuvres of his enemy only by means of trusty couriers. Later, written messages were despatched by aides, who brought the news and conveyed orders, riding hard or traversing the sea in swift boats. Centuries passed and the telegraph began to play its part in the transmission of despatches, to be succeeded in its turn by the field telephone. But as the Russo-Japanese war brought into practical use for the first time the terrible submarine torpedo-boat, so it found a new and marvellous medium for communication between headquarters and outposts of an army or fleet. The ancient Samurai of Nippon fought with two swords; their descendants in 1905 wielded the submarine and the wireless telegraph. As Rojestvensky's sombre fleet moved forward there were no armed scouts dashing across the waves to announce their coming; the electric cable, far below, was dumb; but the very sky above, the waters that were ploughed by the black keels, at the moment when the harassed Russians began to breathe freely, were betraying them. "At exactly 5.30 A.M., on Saturday, May 27th, a wireless message was received at the naval base of the Japanese: '_The enemy's squadron is in sight_.'" Under shelter of the island off Fusan, on the east coast of Korea, lay sixty or more grey ships, their fires banked, smoke slowly floating from their stacks. They had lain thus for weeks, waiting for that message. The instant it was received the decks of every vessel became alive with nimble sailors. Cables were slipped, fires scattered and heaped high with coal, ammunition-hoists handled, and garments flung aside as the men stripped for action. The fleet slowly moved eastward over the waters of the Japan Sea, which roughened under the wind that gathered force as day broadened. Eagerly the small brown fighting men sprang to quarters and pointed to the east, where the sky grew golden with the emblem of their nation, the Rising Sun.