"Gentlemen," he said, "you have now all spoken; and I tender you my most hearty thanks for the frank expression of your several opinions. I have listened with the greatest interest and satisfaction to everything that has been said, but you must pardon me if I say at once, frankly, that you leave me as unconvinced as ever. Or, no; not unconvinced; on the contrary, I am more convinced than ever that, apart, as Mr Swinburne has remarked, from any question of slavish obedience to orders, I should be guilty of a serious, even disastrous, error of judgment, were I to take my battleships and cruisers into Port Arthur roads and give battle to the Russian fleet. The only alternative is to employ the destroyers; and I shall be glad of any suggestions you may be pleased to offer as to the best method of attack." Nobody spoke. It was easy to see that the officers of the battleships and cruisers, deeply imbued with the somewhat fantastic and high-flown ideas of the Japanese with regard to the almost divine virtue of heroism and self-sacrifice, were profoundly disappointed that they were not to be afforded an opportunity to display their possession of those virtues. "Has no one a suggestion to offer?" demanded Togo, in a tone of surprise. "What say you, Swinburne?" turning to me. "It would greatly help us, sir," I said, "if Hang-won could give us even an approximate idea of the position of the Russian ships in the roadstead." "You are right, sir; it would," answered the Admiral. And turning to the Chinaman, he addressed to him a question in what I imagined to be Chinese. The man was replying at some length when Togo interrupted him and turned to the skipper of the flagship. "Captain Ijichi," said he, "a chart of Port Arthur, if you please." The chart was brought, and Hang-won, after poring over it awhile, took a pencil and with meticulous care jotted down certain marks upon it. When he had finished, Togo turned to me and said: "Here we are, Mr Swinburne. These marks indicate the positions of some of the Russian ships, as nearly as Hang-won can remember them. As you see, they are moored in wedge-shaped formation, the point of the wedge to seaward; and that point is occupied by the _Tsarevich_, a battleship. Next her, inshore, comes the _Poltava_, also a battleship, then the _Sevastopol_, another battleship, and abreast of her, in the second line, the battleship _Pobieda_. Of the positions of these he is certain, he says, having taken particular notice of them as he came out; but of the rest he is not so sure, except that there are thirteen of them, exclusive of the _Askold_, all anchored inside the _Tsarevich_. The _Askold_ is a cruiser, and according to Hang-won she is performing patrol duty to and fro, outside the rest of the fleet. You will readily recognise her from the fact that she is the only craft with five funnels.