Stay, though! Why should it not be helped? All that was needed was another steamer--or perhaps two steamers--to fill the gap, and the thing was done. And, hang it all! I was game to do the job myself to-morrow night, when the Russians would least expect me. But, to do the job effectually, it was highly necessary to know the exact width of the gap, and the depth of water in it; and now was the time to ascertain those particulars, while we were on the spot. I would do it! Then came the very practical question: How? What means had we to take soundings, or to measure the gap between the sunken _Fukui_ and the _Yoneyama_? I looked about me, and found that all we had with us was the boat's painter, a piece of rope some seven or eight fathoms long, which might serve as a sounding-line, if only we had a sinker of some sort, which, unhappily, we had not. Then one of the men in the boat, realising what I wanted, informed me that, while preparing the boat for lowering, he had chanced to glance into the locker in the stern-sheets, and had noticed a fishing-line there. Would that be of any use? Of course it would; the very thing for sounding, at all events. We had that line out in double-quick time, cut away the hooks, and then proceeded to knot it at exact intervals corresponding with the length of the boat's after-thwart. Precisely what that length might be, we could ascertain afterward. But, how to measure the width of the gap? There seemed to me to be but one way to do it, and that was by taking the length of our boat herself as a unit of measurement; not a very satisfactory method, I admitted, yet better than nothing. So thereupon we set to work. Starting at the _Fukui's_ mainmast, we dropped the sinker of the fishing-line over the stern and paid out until it reached her deck. Then, giving way with the oars, we felt our way along her deck to her taffrail, lifted the sinker, and dropped it again, clear of the wreck, until it touched bottom. Then, noting the depth as so many knots and fractions of a knot, I jotted the result in my notebook while, the oarsmen keeping the boat in position, another cast was made at the bow end of the boat. Proceeding in this manner, and taking the utmost care to obtain accurate results, we accomplished our task in about half an hour, under a heavy fire from the Russians on the heights, which, strange to say, injured none of us. This done, we pulled out to sea, and were soon afterward sighted and joined by the _Tsubame_ and _Aotaka_, Japanese torpedo-boats, which took us aboard, and exultingly informed us that, a quarter of an hour or so earlier, they had engaged and driven ashore a Russian destroyer, which afterward proved to be the _Silny_, the craft which had torpedoed the _Fukui_, and had narrowly escaped being run down and sunk by the _Yahiko_.