On the evening of February 8th a fleet of dark-hulled ships moved silently westward across the Yellow Sea. In the harbour of Port Arthur lay the pride of the Russian navy, most of the ships riding peacefully at anchor in the outer roads. They comprised the battle-ships _Petropavlovsk_ (flagship), _Perseviet_, _Czarevitch_, _Retvizan_, and _Sebastopol_, and the cruisers _Novik_, _Boyarin_, _Bayan_, _Diana_, _Pallada_, _Askold_, and _Aurora_. Of the officers, many were on shore, enjoying the hospitalities of the port and drinking the health of the Czar. The crews were below decks, or smoking idly and talking, in the low gutturals of their language, of home and friends far away. Secure in their sense of their mighty domain and the power that reached from the Baltic to the Pacific, they sang snatches of rude forecastle songs, or joked and laughed at the prospects of a war with the Japanese, "those little monkeys," who dared dispute even in mild diplomacy with the Great Empire. And as they laughed, and the smoke curled upward from their bearded lips, and the little waves of the peaceful harbour lapped softly against the huge floating forts, the black hulls from the east crept nearer, through the darkness. Nine years had elapsed since the Japanese had invaded Korea and Manchuria. In 1895, victor over the Chinese, firmly established with his troops on the main land, with his fleet riding in the harbour of Port Arthur, which his army had taken by storm, the Mikado had been compelled by the powerful combination of Russia, France, and Germany to give up the material fruits of his victory, and Japan, too exhausted to fight for her rights, withdrew sullenly to her island Empire. Three years later Russia obtained from China a twenty-five years' lease of Port Arthur, which she claimed she needed "for the due protection of her navy in the waters of North China." Her next move was to secure right to build the Manchurian Railway, connecting her two Pacific ports, Vladivostock and Port Arthur, with her western capital. She had at last reached the open sea. Vladivostock, at the south-eastern extremity of her own possessions in the north, was blocked by ice and shut off from the ocean every winter; Port Arthur offered a safe and open roadstead for her navy and mercantile marine throughout the year.