By this time it was half-past two p.m., and the battle had been in progress nearly three hours.  Not having seen the commencement of the affair, we were for some time unable to make head or tail of it.  The ships were mixed up and scattered, and we could perceive little sign of plan or combination on either side.  The first thing that began to make itself evident as we watched was that the struggle was nearing the coast.  At first the nearest ships had been fully a league and a half seaward; before we had occupied our position three-quarters of an hour, many were well within two miles of the coast.  So evident was this that Chubb remarked that half of them would be ashore before the fighting was over.  This of course enabled us to distinguish the vessels better, and we began to make out evident signs that John Chinaman was getting much the worst of it.  The Japanese vessels, working in concert and keeping together, as we began to perceive, seemed to sail round and round the enemy, pouring on them an incessant cannonade, and excelling them in rapidity of fire and manoeuvring.  Some of the Chinese vessels appeared to me to present an appearance of helplessness, and there was no indication of combination as amongst their opponents.  Not but what they blazed away valiantly enough, and some of them had evidently given as good as they got, for more than one Japanese vessel was in flames.  Of course we could not identify these ships, but we could make out that in numbers and armament they were a fair match for the Chinese squadron.  They appeared to pay special attention to the two great Chinese ironclads, the Chen-Yuen and Ting-Yuen, one of which at least had had her big guns, 37-ton Krupps, silenced, though still contributing to the entertainment with the quick-firing armament.  Shortly after three, the King-Yuen, fired by shells, began to burn fiercely; she showed through the smoke like a mass of flame, and was evidently sinking, settling down on an even keel.  Three or four of the enemy circled round, plying her with shot and shell.  Finally, with a plunge she disappeared, and the immediate darkening, as the smoke-clouds rolled in where the fierce blaze of the burning wreck had been, was like the sudden drawing of a veil over the spot where hundreds of men had met their simultaneous doom.  The cannonade slackened, but soon broke out again fiercely as ever.  About this time it seemed as if the Japanese flagship, Matshushima, was about to share the same fate.  She looked all in a blaze forward.  The fire, however, was got under, and later on she was taken out of the action.