Under the Dragon Flag My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War

CHAPTER III

It was dark long be­fore we got back to the bay where we had an­chored the _Columbia_, and we might have found it im­pos­si­ble to make out her where­abouts if Web­ster had not hoist­ed lights to guide us. When again aboard we got up steam and stood out to sea. We should have run for the Yel­low Sea at once but for the pres­ence of the Chi­nese agent, whom we had had no op­por­tu­ni­ty of trans­fer­ring from the _Columbia_. A mo­tion to throw him over­board was neg­atived, and we re­solved to hold on for Port Arthur, where we could get rid of him with­out go­ing much out of our way. Be­sides, we felt cu­ri­ous to see if any fur­ther en­counter would take place be­tween the hos­tile squadrons. Such, how­ev­er, was not fat­ed to be the case. The Japanese al­lege that they in­tend­ed to re­new the at­tack in the morn­ing, and tried with that view to hold a course par­al­lel with that of the re­treat­ing Chi­nese, but lost them dur­ing the night.

We reached Port Arthur on the 19th, and hav­ing ob­tained a pi­lot, en­tered the har­bour. We found there on­ly two of the ves­sels be­long­ing to the de­feat­ed squadron, the _Ping Yuen_ and the _Kwang Ting_. The for­mer did not seem much in­jured, but the lat­ter had ev­ident­ly suf­fered heav­ily, the port bow be­ing par­tial­ly stove, the up­per works de­mol­ished, and the ar­mour­ing tremen­dous­ly bat­tered and dint­ed.

Short­ly af­ter cast­ing an­chor in the West Port, I low­ered a boat to take Lin Wong ashore. In the dock­yard he as­cer­tained that a fast steam launch was to leave for Tientsin with despatch­es with­in two days, and he ar­ranged to take ad­van­tage of her de­par­ture to re­gain that port, from which, it will be re­mem­bered, he had come on board the _Columbia_. As he seemed well ac­quaint­ed with Port Arthur, I got him to take me round, and show me as much of the place as could be seen in the two or three hours of leisure at my dis­pos­al, for the _Columbia_ was to trip her an­chor again in the evening.

The gen­er­al fea­tures of Port Arthur, or, to give it its na­tive name, Lu-​Shun-​Kou, must be tol­er­ably fa­mil­iar to all who have fol­lowed the course of the war. A glance at the map shows its po­si­tion, at the south­ern ex­trem­ity of the Liao­tung Penin­su­la, com­mand­ing, with the formidable forts of Wei-​hai-​wei on the op­po­site tongue of land, near Chefoo, the en­trance to the Gulf of Pechili. Al­though now the prin­ci­pal ar­se­nal and naval de­pot of the Chi­nese Em­pire, it is of quite re­cent cre­ation, on­ly hav­ing come in­to note since 1881, in which year it was de­cid­ed to es­tab­lish a naval dock­yard. Up to then it had on­ly been used as a har­bour for junks em­ployed in the tim­ber trade and car­ry­ing car­goes from the Yalu to ports in the Pechili Gulf, or from the south to Ni­uchang and West Chin-​chou. Na­tive con­trac­tors hav­ing made an ex­ten­sive bun­gle of the job, it was en­trust­ed to a French com­pa­ny, and by them com­plet­ed. Since then the place has in­creased, from an in­signif­icant vil­lage of six­ty or sev­en­ty mud hous­es and a few shops, to a town of over a thou­sand dwellings, as well as two large the­atres, two tem­ples, and a num­ber of banks and inns. The pop­ula­tion at the time of the Japanese in­cur­sion was about 5000 or 6000, in ad­di­tion to a gar­ri­son of about 7000. The port is very spa­cious and com­modi­ous, and dredgers have worked as­sid­uous­ly for sev­er­al years past to deep­en the en­trance to it. The bar has been deep­ened from twelve feet to about twen­ty-​five feet to en­able per­ma­nent moor­ings to be laid down for men-​of-​war. The dock basin, called the East Port, cov­er­ing an area of thir­ty-​two acres, has been con­struct­ed well be­hind the sig­nal bluffs to the right of the en­trance, the West Port, or nat­ural har­bour, open­ing just op­po­site round the long, nar­row spit of land called the Tiger's Tail. The basin has a depth of twen­ty-​five feet at low wa­ter. There are large and nu­mer­ous wharves and quays, fit­ted with steam cranes, and con­nect­ed by a rail­way with the work­shops, which con­tain all the most mod­ern ma­chin­ery and en­gines. The dock­yard, and in fact a con­sid­er­able por­tion of the town, is sup­plied with fresh wa­ter con­veyed by pipes from a spring about four miles to the north. There is a small­er dock for tor­pe­do boats, and a tor­pe­do de­pot on shore where those weapons can be test­ed and reg­ulat­ed. The en­trance to the port is de­fend­ed by tor­pe­does and sub­ma­rine mines, al­though, as I no­ticed, some of the lat­ter had been so bad­ly con­struct­ed and ad­just­ed for depth as to show above wa­ter.

For de­fen­sive pur­pos­es na­ture and art have com­bined to ren­der the place ex­ceed­ing­ly strong. Ranges of hills, vary­ing from 300 feet to 1500 feet, sur­round the port and town al­most com­plete­ly, of­fer­ing scope for for­ti­fi­ca­tion of the most formidable char­ac­ter, ad­van­tages which, as far as con­struc­tion goes, have been well uti­lized, mas­sive and lofty stone forts oc­cu­py­ing ev­ery point of ad­van­tage. I be­lieve they are of Ger­man con­struc­tion. They bris­tle with heavy Krupp and Nor­den­feldt guns. The el­eva­tion on the coast varies from eighty feet to 410 feet. The land de­fences, though new­er than those sea­ward, are less pow­er­ful; the heav­iest guns, of 21 and 24 cen­time­tre, are in the lat­ter. Ev­ery­where the forts are sup­ple­ment­ed by trench­es, ri­fle-​pits, and open re­doubts or walled camps.

Such is, or was, Port Arthur, and when we re­mem­ber how the Turks held Plev­na, an open town un­til the earth­works were hasti­ly thrown up round it, for months against all the force Rus­sia could bring against it, one can­not but feel amaze­ment that a place so pow­er­ful should so eas­ily have fall­en. Prop­er­ly de­fend­ed, it should be unre­ducible by any­thing but famine. The coast de­fences are im­preg­nable, and those in­land, though more sus­cep­ti­ble of at­tack, should not fall be­fore any­thing short of over­whelm­ing su­pe­ri­or­ity of force. I should like to have seen the 20,000 men whom the Japanese led against it take that fortress in forty-​eight hours from Os­man Pacha's army. The Mika­do's gen­er­als, how­ev­er, had formed a per­fect­ly just es­ti­mate of their own pow­ers as against those of the en­emy. In fact, a third of their force could have tak­en Port Arthur from the ridicu­lous sol­diers who held it.

The gar­ri­son in or­di­nary times amounts to 7000 men, but be­fore the Japanese at­tack it had been in­creased to near­ly 20,000. This is in­ad­equate; 30,000 men at least should oc­cu­py the fortress in time of war, and 40,000 would not in my opin­ion be too many.

The chief man in the place when I was there was the Tao­tai, or gov­er­nor, Kung, a broth­er, I have heard, of the Am­bas­sador to Eng­land. His of­fice, I be­lieve, is civ­il; the mil­itary chiefs were Gen­er­als Tsung and Ju. The sol­diers, who ap­peared to range about ev­ery­where pret­ty much at their own dis­cre­tion, were an un­couth, rough lot, with very lit­tle of the smart­ness of dress and bear­ing which we as­so­ciate with the mil­itary char­ac­ter. Ev­ery­where was a most por­ten­tous dis­play of ban­ners, as if the sac­ri­le­gious foot of a foe­man could not be set on any spot ren­dered sa­cred by the drag­on flag. The town pre­sent­ed a very neat and com­pact as­pect, and struck me very favourably as com­pared with Tientsin, the on­ly oth­er Chi­nese town I had been in, and which seemed to me to be for the most part com­posed of nar­row, dirty, stink­ing lanes with one or two good streets in the cen­tre. Port Arthur, as might be ex­pect­ed of so re­cent a set­tle­ment, con­struct­ed to a large ex­tent un­der Eu­ro­pean su­per­vi­sion, is very much bet­ter built, and al­to­geth­er presents, or did present--for to a melan­choly and de­plorable con­di­tion was it soon to be re­duced--a thriv­ing and busy as­pect.

At dusk I quit­ted the streets, with their bazaar-​like shops and strange il­lu­mi­na­tions, and made my way back to the port un­der es­cort of my Chi­nese friend, who with Ori­en­tal po­lite­ness in­sist­ed on see­ing me safe back on board. A most un­wel­come shock await­ed me. No _Columbia_ was to be found, and Lin Wong's in­quiries elicit­ed that she had left near­ly an hour be­fore. We hunt­ed up the pi­lot who had tak­en her out, and learned from him that she had steamed away south-​east im­me­di­ate­ly; she could not, there­fore, be await­ing me out­side. What on earth could be the mean­ing of it? I could on­ly con­jec­ture that by some over­sight the fact of my not be­ing on board had been for­got­ten. She pos­si­bly might re­turn on its be­ing dis­cov­ered that I had been left ashore, but in the mean­time what was I to do? A sug­ges­tion by Lin solved the dif­fi­cul­ty. If the _Columbia_ did not put back, I could ob­tain a pas­sage to Tientsin on the ves­sel which was soon to con­vey him to that port, where I could ar­range my fu­ture pro­ceed­ings ac­cord­ing to cir­cum­stances. This seem­ing the on­ly fea­si­ble plan, I, with many in­ter­nal male­dic­tions up­on the stupid mis­chance, ac­com­pa­nied the agent to an ho­tel or inn where he had al­ready char­tered quar­ters for his short stay in the place. There are some half-​dozen of these es­tab­lish­ments in Port Arthur. Three or four of them are wretched hov­els, which ex­ist­ed in the squalid in­fan­cy of the town; the new­er ones are larg­er and fair­ly com­modi­ous and com­fort­able. The one we oc­cu­pied was near one of the gates of the ap­proach­es to the north-​east­ern forts. Mine host was a square, thick-​set Ce­les­tial named Sen. Port Arthur be­ing well ac­cus­tomed to “for­eign dev­ils,” some of the ser­vants had been en­gaged for their knowl­edge of that cu­ri­ous di­alect “pid­gin En­glish,” which in the far East is pret­ty much what Lin­gua Fran­ca is in the Lev­ant. With a lit­tle prac­tice it is eas­ily com­pre­hend­ed, al­though, un­der the chap­er­on­age of Lin, my dif­fi­cul­ties were large­ly re­duced. For­tu­nate­ly I had a con­sid­er­able sum of Amer­ican mon­ey in my pock­ets, and with Lin's aid was able to ne­go­ti­ate it at one of the banks, at a pret­ty smart loss, I may say. Oth­er­wise I was fair­ly con­tent and com­fort­able, and had no hu­man want but whisky.