that is rather because, as Professor Ker points out, "epic requires a particular kind of warfare, not too highly organised, and the manner of the Homerio battle is found again in Germany, Ireland, and old France." It will be seen, therefore, that the Dark Ages experimented in every kind of prose and verse, and if the literature which they made is forgotten to-day, that is because they produced few men of transcendent genius.

Of the Latin books which distinguish the period, the most famous, no doubt, is Boethius' 'Consolation of Philosophy,' which exercised an extraordinary influence on the Middle Ages, and is still familiar to many who never read it, in the words of others. It has, says Professor Ker, "a strain of philosophy which would neither strive nor cry, a gentle ghost whose presence is recognised in its effect on many minds, persuading them to think wisely about the old commonplaces of Death and Time." In other words, Boethius was a sort of medieval Montaigne, who understood ancient Greece and Rome as he understood his own world, and his 'Consolation' is the one book which has survived as a living influence unto our own time. Professor Ker's account of it could not be improved. "The book," says he, "is not philosophy but consolation. It is popular, it is meant for the weaker brethren. The beauty of it, which lifts it far above the ordinary run of reflections on mortality, is that it restores

the Platonic tradition, or even something older and simpler in Greek philosophy, at a time when simplicity and clearness of thought were about to be overwhelmed in the medieval confusion. Boethius saved the thought of the Middle Ages." And thus Professor Ker finds the just word to say about all the writers of his period. It is impossible to praise too highly the learning and sense of proportion which he has brought to his task. He has made the dry bones of the past live again; he has set in the clear light of intelligence a world which is dark, less through its own ignorance than through the ignorance of others; and he has proved to us once again that there are no gaps in the progress of intelligence, and that if the links in the chain escape our vision they escape it through our own blindness. We cannot do better than leave Professor Ker's book with а quotation from Daniel's 'Defence of Ryme,' given by Professor Ker himself. "Nor can it but touch of arrogant ignorance,' says Daniel, "to hold this or that nation barbarous, these or those times gross, considering how this manifold creature man, wheresoe'er he stand in the world, has always some disposition of worth, entertains the order of society, affects that which is most in use, and is eminent in some one thing or other that fits his humour and the times." In other words, there never was a Dark Age, and Professor Ker is its most erudite and eloquent historian.

CHINAMPO, April 1904.

THE officer in command of the doomed ship stood in front of the wheel with his eyes glued upon the deepening base of black darkness in front of him. The increasing shadow betokened the land he was striv

ing to make. Ever and anon he seized the night-glass, peered into the thickness, and then replaced the glass on the rack. Once only did he raise his right hand in signal to the dim figure of the man at the wheel. All was darkness. The only light was the binnacle, and it was so cowled with canvas that the figure at the wheel was bending over his work to keep his view of the compass. The slow grind of the half-speed engines and the swirl of displaced water was in itself sound enough to render the overpowering feeling of silence almost unbearable.

Suddenly a great flood of light cleft the darkness ahead. It was so white and clear that the faces of the three men on the bridge looked pale and death-like. The man at the wheel winced with the stroke it was literally a stroke of light; but the officer only moved his hand. The enemy had defeated their own ends; they had shown him the passage-half a point to starboard and the course was true. There VOL CLXXVL-NO. MLXV.

stood the white stones of the lighthouse which for weeks had surrendered its functions to port-bound mariners.

For the space of perhaps fifteen seconds the great white eye penetrating the darkness was fixed full upon the boat. Then it winked irresolutely, flashed upwards, then down again, away to starboard, until the elliptical base of the fearsome cone of light was well abeam. Then back it came and glared savagely full upon the steamer, silently closing down upon it. It looked long and steadfastly, and then, as suddenly as it had come, it was cut off. And all was dark and dreadful again. But only for a second. From the centre of the great overpowering mass ahead there shot up a long meteor-like rocket. Its sinuous course closed in a mass of sparks. Then it was as if the torch had been applied to the pièce de résistance of some great firework display. moment what was darkness became a semicircle of scintillating light. The great beam of the Golden Horn searchlight leapt into life. It was supported by a score of lesser searchlights from the foremasts of the ships in harbour. But there were other lightslightning flashes from the breast of the mountain, which at in

I

In a

tervals the acute beams of the searchlights revealed - flashes which seared the gloom and vanished. Within a moment's space after this blaze of light came the ominous rattle which discovered its origin. The forts of Port Arthur were firing the guns which at night are always trained upon the harbour approaches. The tumult was deafening, as the great bare flanks of the mountains behind caught up the deadly roll of discharging quick-firers, and flung the sound back in deafening reverberations. But that was not the worst sound. The hissing rush of projectiles, the ear-splitting swish as they struck the water and exploded, or shrieked in ricochet overhead -in a moment the tension bred of apprehensive darkness had changed to an inferno of mod

ern war.

The man at the wheel bent his head forward with the impulse of a man meeting a storm. But the officer never moved, except his directing hand. The ever appearing and disappearing arc of the searchlights gave him his point, and he steered directly upon it, while the four men crouching at the lifeboat falls and sweating engineroom volunteers wondered when the whistle would blow which would call them on deck from the chance of the most awful death to which mariners live exposed-death from the escape of disabled boilers!

Then for a moment from amidst the circle of flashes, low down on the port-bow of the doomed ship, a smaller searchlight showed. It seemed to

He

break up from the very waterlevel. It was the forelight of 8 destroyer. At last the Japanese officer gave evidence of sensibility to the Hades which surrounded him. had brought his ship far enough into the passage. The beam in front told him that the enemy would do the rest. He blew the whistle which his teeth had almost bitten flat. In a second the men manned the falls of the lifeboat, while the petty officer responsible for the igniting of the bursting charge in the vessel's hold dropped down the hatchway to the point where his duty lay.

"Port, hard a- port!" the officer was now fairly gesticulating. As her head came slowly round a heavy shell hit her forward. So great was the impact of this metal stroke that for a moment it nullified the efforts of the helm, and flung the officer and man at the wheel from their feet, while the men at the falls became a woeful heap in the scuppers. Then another shock. This was different. It was as if an earthquake had struck her: as if some great monster of the deep had seized her in its tentacles and shaken her. Instantaneously the engines stopped. If the officer could have seen them, he would have found that they were twisted out of all semblance of symmetry. torpedo had struck her amidships, and had brought her mechanical movement to а standstill. She would not even answer her helm. And in spite of the inferno below an unend

A

and in spite of the promise of spring which the last fortnight had given, the sleet from the squalls was as icy as that of a mid-winter blizzard. Every quarter of an hour the navigating lieutenant made his way up to the bridge to apprise the admiral of the position of the squadron. Half an hour ago the first signs of approaching dawn had out into the gloom in the east, but the squalls had rolled up again and practically nullified the first efforts of awakening day,-so much so that it was practically impossible to make out even the outline of the vessel following the flag-ship, although it was only two cable-lengths astern. For one moment the navigating lieutenant turned on the little reading - lamp on the bridge, which gave sufficient shrouded light to enable the admiral to read the markings on the chart. The admiral glanced at the pencil - marks, then looked at the clock. He nodded his head, with the single remark, "We are in the right place"; in a moment the little light was turned out again and all was darkness. The three men peered anxiously into the murky darkness on the port beam, the haze of the driving rain-storm was still very thick. Something seemed to catch the navigating lieutenant's ear, for he left the senior officers and made his way across the bridge to the starboard rail; for two minutes he remained motionless, the pose of his body indicating rapt attention.

He seemed satisfied, for on moving back to the others he whispered

something in the admiral's ear, then all three officers went over to the starboard rail. There was no doubt about it now. The wind which had brought the squall dropped as suddenly as it had risen, and the low muffled murmur which heralds firing at sea could be distinctly heard above the wash that the vessel made, as she drove her way through the water.

The squall had passed, and almost immediately the increased vigour of returning day forced itself superior to the shadows of the fast vanishing night.

What had been black now became the dull grey of a humid mid-ocean morning. The great mysterious shadows of the ships astern picked themselves out from the surrounding mists, while even the low hulls of the wickedlooking little torpedo craft, on either flank, began to show as indistinct masses against the false horizon. As day dawned the sound of firing seemed to increase. Now it was quite distinct a rattle of quickfirers burning ammunition in deadly earnest. The torpedo craft had got it now, for suddenly the three indistinct blotches which betokened the vessels on the starboard beam put up their helms and disappeared into the mist. It was too thick yet to make a flagsignal, so the admiral stood on his course. As one looked down from the bridge it seemed that the flag-ship was some ghostly death - ship. Everything was lean and gaunt and silent; there was no movement, save where the rain wash trickled over