The state of affairs there was incredible. Colonel Tretiakoff, commanding the 5th East Siberian Rifle Regiment, was appointed to command the position, but was given no power. Whenever he asked for guns and ammunition for the weakly armed position, for engineers, labour, and building materials to repair the unserviceable batteries, or pointed out the necessity for constructing bomb-proofs, and urged that new positions on the hills might be fortified, the General would fly into a passion and shout: 'Traitors! all traitors! Who says that Kinchou is badly fortified? The Japanese will never take it. I will destroy their whole army if they only dare to land. We all know they are fools, but they will never send a large force here, and so weaken their main army.' Being convinced of the futility of dealing with the General, Tretiakoff, himself a 'sapper,' together with another engineer officer, Schwartz, set to work with his regiment to try and get the place into order. Although he continued, at every convenient opportunity, to point out the unsatisfactory state of the position against which the first blow of the besieging army must fall, not only was he not given more labour, materials, or engineers, but those that he did have were taken away from him. This sounds impossible, but is literally true. Amongst the large number of men now employed on the works there was naturally a proportion of undesirables and the Commandant being anxious lest the results of the work and the plans of the newly-created fortifications should be communicated to the Japanese, ordered a service of police gendarmes to be organized, under which were to be all the railway, town and gendarme police, Captain Prince Mickeladsey was in charge. Strict watch was now kept over the Chinese, and the Japanese knew nothing of what was going on in the Fortress. On June 10, however, Prince Mickeladsey, with all his gendarmes, was sent by Stössel to the other side of Liao-tieh-shan, without the right of entering Arthur, and the Fortress being left without a gendarmerie, offered grand scope for spies. But more of this later. After the sinking of the _Petropalovsk_ the Japanese came almost every night into the outer Roads and laid mines Rarely a night passed without something happening: either destroyers or mine-layers always appeared, and the searchlights used to pick up these gallant craft, which were then shelled by the whole front. Later the enemy became more cunning, sending junks in front of the destroyers to draw fire, thus enabling the destroyers to lay mines with impunity. The navy had hard work from now, fishing for mines, and ships were told off daily for what could not but be a most dangerous duty. The continual night duty also was most harassing, and the gunners--officers and men--were becoming exhausted.