604 A NAVAL ENGAGEMENT :A CHINESE "WARSHIP BEING BOARDED EY JAPANESE.

(By aJapaneseartist.)

CHAPTER XIII.

THE INVASION OF SHAN-TUNG AND THE ADVANCE ON WEI-HAI-WEI, TT TEI-HAI-WEI, now a British naval \\ station, was in 1894 a fortified Chinese harbour, with storehouses for the it, but well inside the bay, is a small island. Thelarger island is knownas Liu-kung-tao, the smaller as I-tao. fleet, and workshops in which minor repairs could be executed. It was in every way inferior in importance to Port Arthur,but after the fall of that place the reduction of Weihai-wei became an object of the Japanese, not so much on account of the value of the place itself asbecauseit was therefuge where Admiral Ting's battleships lay sheltered under the guns of the forts. Infact the Japanese attackedWeihai-wei for precisely the same reason for which the United States armies andsquadrons attacked Santiago de Cuba— namely, to get at the enemy's fleet.

The bay is surroundedby a semicircleofhills. At their base in the south-west corner of the harbour stands the little town of Wei-hai-wei. It was surrounded by a bastioned wall,but was completely commanded by the hills that rose behind it. The real defences of the harbour werethe strong forts on the islands and on the shore ofboth entrances.

On the mainland,near the eastern entrance, there werethree batteries lookingout onthe sea, armed— the first with five, the other two with four heavyguns each. On tlaehills above them, inorder to protect them from attack fromthe landside, four forts had been erected and armed withmodernquick-firing guns. The island forts were two on Liu-kung-tao, one at each end of therocky ridge,armedwith modernheavyguns. some of them mountedondisappearingcarriages. On tlae islet of I-tao (called on some maps Jih-tao), there was a small fort armed with two heavy guns on disappearing carriages, and two quick-firers. On the mainlandnearthe western entrance were threebatteries,armedrespectively with six, two, and four heavy guns. On the The harbour of Wei-hai-wei is alarge bay, an oblong with the corners rounded off, oneofits longer sides facing the sea. It is between five and six miles across from headland to headland, and about half that size measuring from the sea front to theinner shore. But on the sea front an island,nearly two miles long, affords shelter and protection, and divides the opening of the bay into two entrances. Of these tlae western opening is about a mile across. The eastern is about three miles across: in the middle of