Suddenly I heard people on shore calling out (I forgot to mention that ships in Batoum harbour are always lashed to the shore).  I sent my officer to reconnoitre, who found a gaping crowd standing round what they thought was a large fish lashing his tail, but what in reality was an unexploded torpedo with the screw still in motion.  On things being calm I went myself to see what had happened generally during the attack, and found that a torpedo had struck the bows of one of the ironclads on the belt, at the waterline at an angle, had exploded, and scarcely left a mark; that a second torpedo had, after passing through the planks on the defensive barrier I had placed, diverged from its course, and gone quietly on shore as far as the left of the squadron; that a third, as I said, had struck the chain of the flagship and not gone off, but had run on to the beach.  The parts of another torpedo were afterwards picked up, it evidently having exploded somewhere down below.  So we could account for four torpedoes having been fired at us without effect; probably there were more.  Those that were on the beach were in a very perfect state, and as soon as we had rendered them harmless, we made prisoners of war of them.  Now I have been since informed of what went on outside Batoum.  It seems that for three nights two fast Russian steamers, carrying torpedo boats, had been looking for Batoum, and as one of my informants said, ‘We could not find it for love or money.’  A couple of hours before daylight they had steamed off, so as to be out of sight before break of day.  At last they had bribed a man to light a fire in the hills behind the town, and so on the fourth night they got somewhere near it, but they could not make out the ships on account of the dark land behind them.  The time for steaming off having nearly come, they determined to have a shot at us, so fired five torpedoes into what they thought the centre of the Turkish fleet, with what result we have seen.  The person who told me was one of them, and said it was sickening work looking for Batoum.  It is true the nights were fearfully dark, so that the shape of the land could not be made out.  He said that without the traitor’s light they could not have found us.  I am not saying by this that one should always trust to darkness; there are many other ways now of taking the sting out of torpedo attacks.  It is needless to say that the steamers I sent out returned, having seen nothing.  While the fleet was at Batoum, two or three more torpedo attacks were made on a smaller scale without effect; but I have bored my readers enough about torpedoes—­all I know is that I can sleep now when in their vicinity.  While in the Black Sea I several times went with two or three ships that could be spared from other duties and reconnoitred Sebastopol and Odessa, but being fully convinced of the helplessness of few or even of many ships against the heavy batteries of the present day, I did no more than look about me, occasionally exchanging shots with the enemy.  As to burning defenceless towns and villages, I have always been thoroughly adverse to such things, so I never undertook it.  Some people think war should be made as horrible as possible; in this I do not agree.  I could easily have burnt the Emperor’s palace at Yalta, but did not think it expedient to do so.