The day before the _Yakumo_ left Sasebo for our rendezvous at the Elliot Islands, news arrived that the long talked-of Baltic Fleet had reached Madagascar and was at anchor in Passandava Bay, refitting, provisioning, and generally enjoying the hospitality of the French nation. This, of course, was not the first news that we had received of it; we had been duly apprised of its departure from Libau on 15th October and had also heard--with surprise on the part of the Japanese, and with bitter mortification and shame on my own part--of its subsequent unprovoked and unpunished attack upon the Gamecock fleet of British trawlers; but nobody was in the least disturbed by the news that this formidable fleet was at last actually at sea, for as a matter of fact we in Japan regarded its departure as nothing more than a move on the part of the Russian Government intended to encourage the garrison of Port Arthur to continue its resistance. For, to speak the plain truth, nobody seriously believed that the voyage would ever be continued far beyond the western extremity of the English Channel, for we could not see how it was going to be done. But _now_, when it was apparent that France was openly ignoring and outraging all the laws governing neutral nations, in favour of Russia, it behoved Japan to take serious notice of what was happening, and she not only protested vigorously against France's violation of neutrality, but set to work in earnest to prepare for the new menace which was gradually creeping closer to her shores. For a month after the arrival of the _Yakumo_ at the Elliots, I and half of my crew formed a portion of that busy multitude who toiled in Port Arthur harbour to raise the sunken ships which cumbered it, and to clear the entrance channel; but on the 10th of February the naval contingent rejoined its ships, and on the 14th the Japanese battle fleet disappeared from human ken, and for three whole months was no more seen, save by a few who were made clearly to understand the vital necessity to remain absolutely silent. Not so, however, the Japanese cruisers. It was our mission to generate a feeling of uneasiness and anxiety in the mind of Admiral Rojdestvensky and those of his officers and men; and with that object squadrons and single ships were directed to show themselves suddenly and mysteriously, and as suddenly to disappear again, in those waters through which the Russian fleet would have to pass on its voyage to Vladivostock. And we did this so effectually and with such excellent judgment that very soon the various telegraph cables grew hot with the number of messages transmitted through them, telling the most marvellous stories of enormous Japanese fleets seen in various parts of the world at the same moment, and of huge and incredibly strong fortifications erected on the Formosan coast and elsewhere.