"My dear Swinburne, it was worth all the toil of that climb up the cliff, and up the steep slope of the hill, to behold the blank dismay of those Russians. It did not last long, though; to give them the credit due to them, they were brave fellows, and the moment they realised the situation, they simply laughed at us, regarding our exploit as a joke-- as indeed it was, more than anything else. "But the joke had its grim side, too; for the commandant immediately ordered his men to cover us with their rifles, and then ordered us to surrender. "`How are you going to take us?' I asked. "`Throw your revolvers over here to me,' he ordered; `and I will send out some men to conduct you to the town.' "`No,' I said. "`If you do not, I shall be compelled to shoot,' he said. "`Then, shoot, and be hanged to you,' I replied; and giving a sign to my men, we opened fire with our revolvers at the same moment that the Russians blazed away at us with their rifles. And not until every chamber of our revolvers was empty did we turn and race down that hill toward the head of the cleft by which we had ascended." "Did you suffer any loss?" I asked. "None at all," was the cheerful answer. "The bullets hummed about our ears like mosquitoes in the summer-time, but not one of us was even touched. On the other hand, I saw several Russians fall before our fire, and I think that at least thirty of them must have gone down before we turned and honourably `hooked it,' as you would say." I smiled. Good old Ito! He was a splendid fellow, honest as the day, utterly unassuming, brave as a lion, everything in short that a shipmate should be; but it was evident that the habit of introducing that favourite expression "honourable" in conjunction with a bit of British slang, was inveterate with him, and I felt that it would be a long time before he would be able to recognise its incongruity. "Well," I said. "What happened next?" "Oh, nothing, so far as we were concerned," he replied. "We scrambled down the cleft into our boat and pushed off, still keeping quite close to the foot of the cliffs, although there was a heavy sea rolling in and breaking upon them. And indeed it was high time for us to be off, for when we pulled out of our little harbour at the base of the cliff, the first light of dawn was showing along the horizon to the eastward. "Suddenly, the cannonading, which had completely died away, broke out furiously again from the heights above, and from the new batteries which have been built on the low ground higher up the harbour. At first we thought we had been seen, and that they were firing at us; but presently a steamer hove in sight to seaward, and we saw that the firing was directed at her and three others which followed her. These we presently recognised as the remaining explosion steamers, which had lost their way in the fog of the night before.