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Updated: June 1, 2025
This matter arranged, I returned to the Kasanumi, and we resumed our voyage while the prize headed away south-west, on her way round to the Elliot Islands. We now had leisure to look into the extent of our own injuries. These, it proved, were by no means so serious as might have been expected, having regard to the fierceness and closeness of the fight.
Breathlessly I awaited the result, and presently, to my delight, I saw that our second torpedo had got home! "Good old Ito!" I exclaimed aloud; and, as I spoke, the man himself stood beside me. "Two hits!" he gasped, almost inarticulate with excitement and delight. "The Kasanumi has done her duty to-night." "She has," I agreed; "and so have you, splendidly, old chap.
I congratulated myself upon having sighted her in good time before entering her danger zone, for the Kasanumi was about a mile ahead of the main body of our little fleet, and I felt that I should have time to deal with her before the others came up.
The fleet as a whole now lay broad on our starboard beam, and we in the Kasanumi were crossing the bows of a two-funnelled battleship which, from her position as the outermost ship of the fleet, I knew must be the Tzarevich, when, out of the tail of my eye, so to speak, I again caught the flash of one of our Whiteheads as it leapt outward and plunged into the sea.
"I anticipate that the work required of the torpedo flotilla will be of an exceptionally arduous and hazardous character; and for that reason, Captain Swinburne, I am going to place it under your command, with the Kasanumi as your flagship. I have been keeping my eye upon you, sir, and I will take this opportunity to express my very high appreciation of your conduct.
That he had by no means forgotten me was quickly made manifest, for no sooner was he near enough to identify the Kasanumi than his semaphore started work, signalling that he wished to communicate, and upon my signalman responding, his first question was whether I was still in command.
It also appeared that at the moment when I ordered the course of the Kasanumi to be altered, the Akatsuki was close astern of us, and broad on our port quarter, the consequence being that the shifting of our helm carried us so close athwart her bows that she all but touched us when crossing our stern.
At length everybody had spoken except myself, and I was heartily hoping that I should be passed over as a person of so little account that my opinion would not be considered worth having. Not so, however. The Admiral turned to me and said, with a smile: "And now at last we come to our honourable English friend, the captain of the Kasanumi. What has he to say upon the matter?
The torpedo-boats' crews made much of us and, I believe, would have given us everything they had, if we would have taken it; but I contented myself with a pannikin of saki, to counteract the cold of my drenched clothing, and then asked them to run me off alongside my own ship, the Kasanumi, which was hove-to about a mile further out.
When at length the bandage was removed, several broad strips of dressing were disclosed, which, upon removal, revealed a ghastly great jagged wound stretching right across my chest, the edges of which had been very neatly drawn together by a number of stitches. Then, for the first time, I remembered the violent blow on the chest which I had received when the bows of the Kasanumi were destroyed.
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