It was just half-past nine o'clock, by my watch, when, bursting through the curtains of haze, our battle fleet hove in sight in the south-west quarter, with flags flying, the water leaping and foaming about their cutwaters, and a fine "white feather" of steam playing on the top of their waste-pipes, indicating that the stokers were maintaining a full head of steam in the boilers. But--Japanese luck again--they were just too late; for at that moment the Russian fleet entered the protective zone of their shore batteries and, with a very poor attempt at bravado, slowed down to a speed of about six knots, while the _Sevastopol, Pobieda_, and _Peresviet_ came steaming out to meet them. They had managed to escape by the skin of their teeth; and now, in accordance with the instructions given to the Admiral not to risk his ships by pitting them against the shore batteries, we also were obliged to slow up, and finally to stop our engines. As a matter of fact, the time had come for us to retire; but evidently everybody was curious to see what would be the result of my mine-laying operations of the preceding night, and by common consent we all lay-to. We had not long to wait. We saw some signalling going on between the flagship and the three craft that had come out to meet the fleet; saw the trio fall into line in rear of the retreating fleet; and then, while our glasses were glued to our eyes as we watched the procession of great ships sweeping majestically toward the harbour's mouth--from which they were then little more than a mile distant--we suddenly beheld a tremendous flash of fire envelop the bows of the _Petropavlosk_, the flagship, which was leading the way into the harbour. The flash was accompanied by the upheaval of a gigantic cone of water and an outburst of thick yellow smoke which at once told us that one of our mines had got in its deadly work. Instantly a great exultant roar of "Banzai Nippon!" burst forth from the throats of the eagerly watching Japanese, but it was as instantly checked when they began to realise the full magnitude of the disaster that had befallen their enemy. For even before the sound of the shattering explosion reached our ears we saw her fore topmast fall, saw long tongues of flame leap up from her decks, saw her-two funnels whirl over and fall, one after the other, while her bridge, pilot-house, and foremast soared high into the air; and so tremendous was the force of the explosion that actually one of her 6-inch gun turrets was torn bodily from its strong fastenings and hurled some twenty feet aloft, to crash downward again upon the hapless ship's deck, while a great burst of flame, probably due to the explosion of her boilers, shot up where her two funnels had stood a moment before. A series of heavy explosions followed, seeming to indicate the explosion of her magazines, and then the doomed ship became enveloped in a thick haze of green smoke, in the midst of which played great streams of fire.