W

E were not a fighting crew, orthodoxly speaking. Sam Miller, the captain, was the only one of us who had seen service. He had been a midshipman on the Adder, in 1898, when it captured a British schooner trying to sneak into Havana harbor. Bill Jones, the first lieutenant, came next nearest to having seen a fight. He was shot at by a Canadian revenue cutter when poaching on Lake Erie. The rest of us, outside the engine men and the stokers, were where we were because we had worked on the boat for the man who built her.

"It's going to take a blamed sight more luck than we're likely to get to take us to Vladivostok without a fight," said Miller, sweeping the horizon with his telescope and noting an uncomfortable number of Japanese ships. Responsibility must have been weighing on him, we thought, for a fight was just the thing we knew he wanted.

Looking for Luck

"Luck! I sh'd say 'twould be mighty poor luck if we did," retorted Jones, and "That's right," from Clarke, who had charge of the deck gun, emphasized the disagreement.

"Well, well, we'll get the luck you want, certain enough," said the captain. "Twouldn't be so bad at that if I knew you fellows wouldn't fumble somewhere at the wrong time." It was a way with Miller to make light of our fighting worth because we had not been put to the test and he had.

"Leave us alone for that," we assured him, and he smiled good naturedly. He knew every man of us was true, and was only bantering when pretending to doubt.

The southern coast of Sakhalin loomed mistily in the morning sunlight as we skirted it on our course. With only our armored top and observation tower showing above water, we had little to fear from the eyes of the Japanese. Nearer to Vladivostok we would not have minded the eyes; but off Sakhalin, with no Rus

sian warship within 100 miles, and the Japanese wirelessing all about us, we were not taking chances.

Fleet of the Czar Unprepared

As at Port Arthur six years before, now again the fleet of the Czar had been caught unprepared. The clashes in Sakhalin, invited by the Treaty of Portsmouth, had not been treated at St. Petersburg with the importance which they merited. The bureaucracy, busy with new plans in Persia and with eyes once more on Constantinople, had been blind to the rapid development of the crisis.

Only a half-dozen cruisers, built since 1905, a score or less of torpedo-boats, and three of the new and untried type of craft, of which we were one, made up the Russian naval force in the Pacific. Dwarfing this into seeming insignificance were the battleships of Japan and Great Britain, united still by treaty, and ready to crush Russia as she never had been crushed before.

An American Submarine

Yet, as the whitish-green waves broke easily over our deck on that April morning, there was not a man of us who did not believe that a new wonder was about to be revealed. Within the 275 feet of length and 32 feet of our breadth, we had instruments of destruction such as never before in history had been tried on an enemy. It might be a breach of neutrality to fight, but the fight was not of our choosing. We had engaged as crew because an American inventor had hired us, and the Russian Admiralty was experimenting with his invention. Besides, the dominance of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, and some disputes over the Philippines, had changed American sentiment since six years before.

Below Sakhalin the sea stretched a wide arm inland, and far on our starboard bow the giant hull of a British battleship limned itself against the background of haze which overhung the shore. We gave her a wide berth, alter

ing our course two points to pass well out of her range. Blood was still thicker than water, and when the fight came we preferred it should be with the yellow

man.

Searchlights on Watch

Still sailing partly submerged, we were by nightfall twenty miles off Vladivostok, and in full view of a portion of the Japanese fleet which was blockading the harbor. The same rapidity which had marked the attack at Port Arthur was again in evidence.

As the last streak of sun-red faded from the western sky, and the dusk of a moonless night grew quickly over all, another glare began fitfully to light up the scene. From the outlying forts of Vladivostok and from the Russian warships which had hurriedly made for the port, searchlights shot their long, white streams over the water, sweeping wide circles in search for attacking torpedoboats. Between us and the searchlights of the Russians other lights gleamed over the waves. They were from the vessels of Japan, on the lookout for such as ourselves who might try to gain the shelter of the port. In a long line they stretched, battleships, cruisers, torpedo-boats, from ten miles or more below the city to as far north of it.

Ready for the Rush

"Pretty tough line to buck through," commented Jones, who had played football at college before catching fish in proscribed waters in Lake Erie.

"Gettin' scared?" asked the captain, who saw a chance to get back at the remark about "luck."

"Not what you'd notice, I guess," and Jones pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Strange how touchy a fellow is about his bravery.

We had just slowed down to quarterspeed, poking along to get closer to the shore, and lessening the distance between us and the nearest Japanese, when Jones, who had taken up the receiver of the submarine telephone, spoke again.

"Ship of some sort coming our way," he said. "Can hear her screws. Sounds like a torpedo-boat."

"What direction?" asked the captain. "On the port bow, about six points.

Seems to be going slowly.-Hold on!'One-two-three, One-two-three, One.' She's signaling. It's our signal, sir." "Answer her," called the captain. "Here, you,-."

Pick Up a Sister Ship

I dove down the companionway, and in a moment was in the signaling compartment. With the copper mallet I rapped out the signals on the hull, plainly, "Onetwo-three, One-two-three, One." I repeated them regularly, holding the telephone connecting with the turret to my ear so I might vary them if ordered. In about two minutes the captain telephoned: "It's the Nixon I. Tell 'em we're the Nixon II."

"Six-one, six-one," I rapped on the hull. We had picked up a sister boat and would have company in our dash. Good! We might shorten that Japanese line a bit before we got through with it.

When I came on deck again, the low top of the Nixon I was discernible about a hundred feet away on the port side. Both boats were hove to, and the officers were in conference. In half an hour we were under way, headed in the direction of the Japanese battleship, we steering to cross the bows, the Nixon I to pass by the stern. Each man was at his post. The captain, Jones, and the second lieutenant were in the conning tower, Jones with the receiver to his ear, with another man in the hold ready to transmit signals under water; the engineering force prepared to change the motive power from boiler-steam to the new motor-explosive, and the gunners made ready the automobile torpedoes, propelled by the same. new device.

Deadly Explosives Ready

My post was to superintend the smokebombs. These, were carried in metallic capsules, packed in an outer casing of shrapnel, each capsule being provided with orifices through which the smoke was to fume off. We had three hundred pounds of the stuff on board, and in one chamber of the bomb we loaded liquefied ammonia gas and in the other liquefied hydrochloric acid gas, with a bursting charge of gunpowder to disrupt the chambers and break up the projectile.

The streaky glare from forts and war

ships was giving a borealis-like effect to the scene ahead of us, throwing the night behind into darker relief, as we loaded a bomb into a deck gun and noted that our presence already was suspected. A penetrating gleam of light from the battleship towards which we were headed was turned in our di

rection, moving

"Every man was hurled forward."

steadily back and forth over a fixed area, not as before playing at haphazard everywhere. The motion of our propeller, so audible through the water, evidently had registered its sound on the battleship's receiver.

Firing the Smoke Bombs

But the distance was yet too great for a bomb to carry, and the Japanese gunners would find sound a difficult target to practice at. So we forged ahead to get closer, and did not pay much attention to the long-range shot or two which the Japanese chanced at random, even when one shell struck not a hundred yards away. That gave us an idea of the distance, though, and soon afterwards came the command from Miller: "Ready there with the smoke-bombs.-A mile

and a-quarter. - Let go one!"

Out into the night shot the gas laden projectile, but it fell short of its mark, plunging impotently into the sea away this side. A volley from the battleship greeted this disclosure of our position. "Ready with another bomb. Fire!"

Clarke at the gun did his work better this time. A dense volume of opaque vapor was seen to spread itself about the forward end of the battleship, through which the rays from the searchlight peered dimly like a full moon through a mist. It was the muriate of ammonia formed by the combination of the acid and the ammonia when the bomb burst. Mixing with the moisture of the air the fumes of concentrated sulphuric acid were blinding and stinging and burning all who might be within their reach.

Jap Battleship a Victim

Twice again we fired, both bombs. bursting near enough the ship to encircle. it with a vapor through which it was impossible for its crew to see. Into the heart of the cloud we fired a torch-bomb, and a flame of acetylene, formed by the igniting of the calcium carbide and water of the projectile, shot up twenty feet and burned with a dazzling, blinding glare.

We were by this time not more than three-quarters of a mile from the battleship which lay at our mercy. But down

the line of investing vessels a commotion was noticeable. Searchlights were playing with an activity which made the lightly rolling waves glisten as under the rays of a dozen moons. Wireless messages, in cipher so that we could not interpret them, filled the air. The dark specks of the torpedo-boats of the Japanese, as they showed up in the flood of light, were seen heading in our direction. "Now for the torpedoes," came the captain's command.

Blowing Up a Fleet

The two lateral submarine tubes were already charged with ten automobile torpedoes, loaded one after the other like the balls of a Roman candle. In the lookout tower Jones stood by the electrical keyboard and table which controlled their discharge. With a pressure of his finger he released one of the missives. Not a sound marked its speeding from the boat. Generating its own power by steam from a burning explosive, it sped, turbine-propelled, toward its mark. A scarcely audible rumble, a great column of water which rose through the vapor and flame, a drunken reeling of the battleship, then a sickly sagging by the head, and in a few minutes more a plunge foremost below the surface, and only an angry swirl of waters, with a few scraps of wooden wreckage and the awful human debris marked the end of the giant fighter.

Darkness was again about us. Search light and torch-bomb no longer lit up the spot where our victim had sunk. Off to the south the dark specks of the oncoming torpedo-boats showed momentarily in the flashes of the warships' lights. Signalling to the Nixon I to engage the attention of these, we headed southwesterly, again bearing toward the shore to pass to port of the next Japanese cruiser.

Steaming Fifty Miles an Hour

It was now that we needed more speed than boiler-fed engines could give, and the order went down to change from coal to explosive. Long rods of a compound of nitroglycerine and guncotton, a foot in diameter, solidly encased in steel cylinders which forced the burning from only one end, were attached to auxiliary engines and turbines. A stream of water was turned on, and the explosive, burn

ing without atmospheric oxygen under a pressure of 250 pounds to the square inch, and mixing with the water, generated power equal to 25,000 pounds' pressure per square inch.

As the rush of the new motive was felt on the turbines, the boat, already going at eighteen miles an hour, leaped like a spurred horse lagging in a race, and in a minute we were speeding at a rate little short of fifty miles an hour. A great mountain of water welled up in our wake, following and towering over us to a height above the level of the conning tower. Within the latter the dash of the spray against the armor and the rush of the air made hearing difficult.

Under a Heavy Fire

In five minutes we had traveled four miles, and had hardly realized the great change in our location when a hail of small shot from quick-firers served notice that we were a target for the enemy. Increasing the pressure on the motive, we doubled the rate of combustion, and at a mile-a-minute speed veered our course enough to bring the torpedo tubes in line with the cruiser. Decreasing the pressure again so as not to overtake our own torpedo, we discharged the projectile.

Our judgment in getting so near the enemy had been bad. With greater experience we would have calculated better the enormous speed at which we had been traveling. A terrific impact at the base of the tower, which staggered the boat, followed the bursting of a ten-inch shell aboard of us. For a moment those who were in the tower, stunned by the shock, stood listless at their posts. For a moment only, but in that time we were within six hundred yards of the stricken, reeling cruiser, and no power on earth could stop us in the twenty seconds. which would hurl us against her great steel bulk.

Dive under a Warship

"Submerge!" shouted Miller, hoarsely, steadying himself with difficulty and seizing the handle which deflected the rudders. At the same time Clarke threw open the valves of the submergence tanks, and with a shudder from stem to stern as the water swept over our bow, we dove from sight, head on, towards the cruiser's hull.