Hyogo, May 15.
The Matsushima Kan, returned from China, is anchored before the
Garden of the Pleasure of Peace. She is not a colossus, though
she has done grand things; but she certainly looks quite
formidable as she lies there in the clear light,--a stone-gray
fortress of steel rising out of the smooth blue. Permission to
visit her has been given to the delighted people, who don their
best for the occasion, as for a temple festival, and I am
suffered to accompany some of them. All the boats in the port
would seem to have been hired for the visitors, so huge is the
shoal hovering about the ironclad as we arrive. It is not
possible for such a number of sightseers to go on board at once,
and we have to wait while hundreds are being alternately admitted
and dismissed. But the waiting in the cool sea air is not
unpleasant; and the spectacle of the popular joy is worth
watching. What eager rushing when the turn comes! what swarming
and squeezing and clinging! Two women fall into the sea, and are
pulled out by blue-jackets, and say they are not sorry to have
fallen in, because they can now boast of owing their lives to the
men of the Matsushima Kan! As a matter of fact, they could not
very well have been drowned; there were legions of common boatmen
to look after them.
But something of larger importance to the nation than the lives
of two young women is really owing to the men of the Matsushima
Kan; and the people are rightly trying to pay them back with
love,--for presents, such as thousands would like to make, are
prohibited by disciplinary rule. Officers and crew must be weary;
but the crowding and the questioning are borne with charming
amiability. Everything is shown and explained in detail:
the huge thirty-centimetre gun, with its loading apparatus and
directing machinery; the quick-firing batteries; the torpedoes,
with their impulse-tubes; the electric lantern, with its
searching mechanism. I myself, though a foreigner, and therefore
requiring a special permit, am guided all about, both below and
above, and am even suffered to take a peep at the portraits of
their Imperial Majesties, in the admiral's cabin; and I am told
the stirring story of the great fight off the Yalu. Meanwhile,
the old bald men and the women and the babies of the port hold
for one golden day command of the Matsushima. Officers, cadets,
blue-jackets, spare no effort to please. Some talk to the
grandfathers; others let the children play with the hilts of
their swords, or teach them how to throw up their little hands
and shout "_Teikoku Banzai!_" And for tired mothers, matting has
been spread, where they can squat down in the shade between
decks.
Those decks, only a few months ago, were covered with the blood
of brave men. Here and there dark stains, which still resist
holy-stoning, are visible; and the people look at them with
tender reverence. The flagship was twice struck by enormous
shells, and her vulnerable parts were pierced by a storm of small
projectiles. She bore the brunt of the engagement, losing nearly
half her crew. Her tonnage is only four thousand two hundred and
eighty; and her immediate antagonists were two Chinese ironclads
of seven thousand four hundred tons each. Outside, her cuirass
shows no deep scars, for the shattered plates have been
replaced;--but my guide points proudly to the numerous patchings
of the decks, the steel masting supporting the fighting-tops, the
smoke-stack,--and to certain terrible dents, with small cracks
radiating from them, in the foot-thick steel of the barbette. He
traces for us, below, the course of the thirty-and-a-half
centimetre shell that pierced the ship. "When it came," he tells
us, "the shock threw men into the air that high" (holding his
hand some two feet above the deck). "At the same moment all
became dark; you could not see your hand. Then we found that one
of the starboard forward guns had been smashed, and the crew all
killed. We had forty men killed instantly, and many more wounded:
no man escaped in that part of the ship. The deck was on fire,
because a lot of ammunition brought up for the guns had exploded;
so we had to fight and to work to put out the fire at the same
time. Even badly wounded men, with the skin blown from their
hands and faces, worked as if they felt no pain; and dying men
helped to pass water. But we silenced the Ting-yuen with one more
shot from our big gun. The Chinese had European gunners helping
them. If we had not had to fight against Western gunners, _our
victory would have been too easy._"
He gives the true note. Nothing, on this splendid spring day,
could so delight the men of the Matsushima Kan as a command to
clear for action, and attack the great belted Russian cruisers
lying off the coast.