There was a considerable swell on, but it was a calm, bright, cold day when Bob left the monster battle-ship, which scarcely felt the motion of the waves, for the tiny _Kasumi_, rolling and pitching beneath. A boat was lowered from the _Hatsuse_, and but for his experience in yachting on the lower reaches of the Clyde Bob might have had some qualms as to how he was to mount the rope-ladder let down over the side of the _Kasumi_. Though he failed to make the ascent with the nimbleness of a deep-sea pilot, he was on his mettle, and did not disgrace himself in the eyes of the crews of the _Hatsuse_ and _Kasumi_, critically watching him from their respective vessels.
On reaching the deck of the destroyer he was as much surprised as pleased to meet Yamaguchi. He knew that the sub-lieutenant on his recovery had been promoted and appointed to a torpedo vessel, but until this moment he had been unaware to which. Their meeting was very cordial; Yamaguchi looked on Bob as his preserver, and Bob on his part was delighted to find that he was to make the passage to Chemulpo in company with one whom he already regarded as a friend.
Besides Yamaguchi, the officers on board were two sub-lieutenants, a doctor, and an engineer.
"We are fifty-five all told," added Yamaguchi, after introducing their new mess-mate.
"Where do you stow them all?" asked Bob in surprise.
The lieutenant showed him first his own cabin, in the after part of the vessel--a room about ten feet square by seven high, with about as much accommodation as a small bathing-machine. Next to it was the ward-room, a trifle larger in area, in which Yamaguchi proposed that Bob should make his sleeping quarters on a small settee.
"It's half a mile too short for you," he said with a smile.
"I can lengthen it, or double myself up," replied Bob, who was indeed more than satisfied with his quarters when he saw the space allotted to the officers--four tiny cabins, each of which could have stood comfortably on an ordinary four-poster bedstead. Amidships were the engine-room and stoke-holds, shimmering with a white light from the furnaces, so intense that the stokers had to wear coloured glass goggles to preserve their eyes from blindness. The stokers, strong of arm and steady of nerve, looked like small demons from the Inferno as they kept cheerful watch on the gauges, cooped up as they were within the length of a man's body from the blazing mouths.