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It is a true saying, that "the pitcher which goes too often to the well gets broken at last;" and thus it came about with me, or rather with the Kasanumi. As the days passed, we became aware of greatly increased activity on the part of the garrison of Port Arthur.
I had said farewell to my very kind friends, the Boyds, some days before, and had taken up my abode aboard the Kasanumi, which, with the Asashio, Shirakumo, and Akatsuki, constituted the 1st Division of the destroyer flotilla.
When I went on deck again, the dawn was just brightening the eastern sky, and I then noticed that we seemed to have more than our proper complement of men aboard. Inquiring the reason, I learned that the Kasanumi had picked up the crew of the Fukui Maru, poor Hirose's ship; and they furnished me with the particulars of the gallant fellow's heroic death.
I was glad to find myself aboard my own little ship once more; and the crew seemed to be as glad to see me as I was to see them; for it appeared that during my absence the Kasanumi had been employed upon nothing but patrol work, which was not at all to the taste of my lads.
When, therefore, I told the Admiral this, with his usual directness of purpose he at once appointed me to superintend the construction of the long boom; his orders being that I was to remain in hospital until the doctors should discharge me; when I was to resume the command of the Kasanumi, and with her as flagship, proceed to the Elliot Islands, in charge of the torpedo flotilla which he would leave behind for that purpose, escorting the steamers into which he would tranship all the materials necessary for the construction of the long boom.
I was at once taken below and temporarily patched-up, while the crew of the Kasanumi were being transferred, together with such of their belongings as they were able to save, my cabin steward with the utmost devotion concentrating all his efforts upon saving the most valuable of my belongings, regardless of the loss of his own.
Steadily the Kasanumi held on, as though utterly unsuspecting, steering a course which, if continued, would take us athwart the submarine's hawse at a distance of about three hundred yards, or less than half the effective range of her torpedo.
Like a greyhound slipped from the leash, the Kasanumi rushed at that luckless periscope, about which a few bubbles of foam were just beginning to gather at the moment when our stem, towering over it, hid it from my sight.
The rafts were constructed merely of rough timber stoutly nailed together, while the flags, being only required to last a day or two, as we hoped, were made of coloured calico, the edges turned over and hemmed with a sewing-machine, that they might not fray or tear. A couple of hours' work sufficed to complete my small requisition, with which I returned to the Kasanumi.
Then, quite unexpectedly, we came upon the three Russian destroyers again; and those of us who happened to be prepared of which the Kasanumi was one gave them a further peppering, to which, as before, they made no reply.
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