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The Asama, however, next but one astern of the Yakumo, suffered very much more severely than we did, three heavy shells hitting her abaft in quick succession, throwing her steering gear out of action, and causing her to leak so badly that she had to drop out of the line and be left astern, executing temporary repairs.
Clearly, however, we were mistaken in so believing, and Kamimura at once recognised that capricious fortune was unexpectedly holding out to him the opportunity to wipe off some of the utterly undeserved opprobrium that had attached to him earlier in the war, because of his failure to bring the Vladivostock squadron to book, and which his later success had by no means effaced; accordingly, he signalled the squadron to increase speed to eighteen knots, which was supposed to be the maximum attainable by the Asama and ourselves, although the others were capable of an extra knot.
When the Koreishites beheld these signs of undisturbed quiet, they concluded that no one could recently have entered the cavern; so they turned away, and pursued their search in another direction. Whether protected by miracle or not, the fugitives remained for three days undiscovered in the cave, and Asama, the daughter of Abu-Bekr, brought them food in the dusk of the evenings.
Meanwhile, Dewa, who was bringing up the rear in the Asama, by the speed of which ship the rest of the squadron regulated theirs, was very cleverly allowing the Russians to slowly overtake him, while the Russians were straining every nerve to do so, stoking up furiously and wasting their coal in the most reckless manner.
We were not doomed to remain very long in suspense, however, for just as eight bells was striking a wireless message arrived from the Admiral, ordering the Asama and ourselves to rejoin forthwith, and giving us our course, east-south-east.
She was making a dead set at the Asama, our most valuable ship, getting right to windward of her, and pouring dense volumes of black smoke from her four funnels, so forming a screen for herself, under cover of which she was evidently trying to edge in to within effective torpedo range.
Our engines had just stopped, and I was on the point of opening a semaphore conversation with the Asama, hove-to about half a mile distant, with the purpose of making some sort of arrangement for coping with certain possible eventualities, when a vivid flash and a great cloud of smoke burst from the Mikasa, and was immediately followed by similar outbursts from the rest of our battleships, which were opening fire upon the Russian rear as the ships came within range.
The navigator and one sailor are also Japanese, born in Hawaii but American citizens. The crew of ten consists entirely of Japanese born in Japan. The ten boats which fly the American flag but are manned by Japanese crews are: "Alert," "Asama," "Columbus," "Flying Cloud," "Magellan," "Oipango," "San Lucas," "Santa Margarita," "Taiyo," "Wesgate."
But the lookouts aboard the Mikasa were evidently as wide awake as any of us, for our flags were scarcely aloft when the flagship signalled the armoured cruiser Asama to chase in the south-western board; and in little more than an hour afterward she rejoined the fleet, accompanied by the Russian steamer Argun, as a prize.
Thus, in the year of Ieyasu's decease, his sixth son, Matsudaira Tadateru, was deprived of his fief 610,000 koku and removed from Echigo to Asama, in Ise. Tadateru's offence was that he had unjustly done a vassal of the shogun to death, and had not moved to the assistance of the Tokugawa in the Osaka War.
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