In accordance with the Admiral's instructions, the _Yakumo_ was to lead the way to sea, and it was a proud moment for me when, standing upon the cruiser's navigating bridge, I personally rang down the order to the engine-room, "Ahead, half-speed, both engines!" And I considered--and still consider--that I had every reason to be proud; for here was I, a lad not yet quite nineteen years of age, captain of one of the finest and most formidable cruisers in the Japanese navy. And I had attained to that position--I may say it now, I think, without laying myself open to the charge of being unduly vain--solely by my own exertions and without a particle of favour shown me, excepting that, when my own country contemptuously dispensed with my services, the aliens whom I was now serving received me with the utmost courtesy and kindness. Ah, well! thank God, that bitter period in my life is past now, and I can bear to look back upon it with equanimity, but the memory of it often swept down upon me like a black cloud in the days of which I am now writing. But there was no thought of my unmerited disgrace and ruined career in my own country to interfere with my happiness or humble my pride upon that glorious morning; I enjoyed the satisfaction of knowing that my innocence had been made clear, that the stain of guilt had been removed from my name, and I was as happy just then as I suppose it is ever possible for mortal to be. And indeed, quite apart from matters of a purely personal nature, it would have been very difficult for any normal-minded individual to have been otherwise than buoyant upon that particular morning, for everything conspired to make one so. The weather was glorious; the sky, a clear, rich sapphire blue, was, for a wonder, without a cloud, the air was so still that until we got under way and made a wind for ourselves the signal flags drooped in motionless folds, and their interpretation was largely a matter of guesswork. Then there was all the pomp and circumstance of modern war, the ships already cleared for action, and each of them decorated with at least two enormous battle-flags--wrought by the dainty fingers of Japan's fairest daughters--flaunting defiantly from her mast-heads. It must have been a magnificent sight to behold that proud fleet steaming out to sea, ship after ship falling into line with machine-like precision and keeping distance perfectly, first the squadron of cruisers, led by the _Yakumo_; then the other five armoured cruisers, with the _Asama_ in the van; then the four battleships-- accompanied by the _Nisshin_ and _Kasuga_, which were powerful enough to take their place in the line of battle--and, finally, the swarm of heterogeneous craft composed of the older and less important cruisers and other vessels, and those wasps of the sea, the destroyers. The _Yakumo_ had scarcely begun to gather way when the flagship signalled "Course South-West by South; speed twelve knots."