eleven o'clock
I knew , for instance -- and this was most important -- that the searchlight station was placed so far back from the edge of the crumbling cliff that the water immediately at the foot of the latter , and for a distance of perhaps a hundred yards to seaward , could not be reached by the beam of the light , and was therefore enveloped in darkness , rendered all the deeper and more opaque by the dazzling brilliance of the light ; and I also knew that along the outer edge of this patch of darkness there was a sufficient depth of water to float a destroyer , even at dead low water . My plan , therefore , was to make a wide sweep to seaward upon leaving the blockading squadron , gradually turning east and north , and thus eventually to get into Takhe Bay , some five miles east of Port Arthur anchorage , and from thence creep along the shore to the westward , keeping as close in as the depth of water would permit . There was only one difficulty about this , which was that at a certain point not far from where the searchlight station stood , there was a gap in the line of cliff where the ground sloped steeply down to the water 's edge for a short distance , and here of course the beam of the light had uninterrupted play right up to the beach ; but I believed I could overcome this difficulty by simply watching my opportunity and slipping past the gap when the searchlight was not playing upon it . All went well with us until about seven bells in the first watch -LRB- half-past eleven o'clock -RRB- when a great bank of fog , for which those seas are notorious , came driving in from the south-west , and in a moment we were enveloped in a cloud so thick that , standing upon the bridge , I could scarcely distinguish our aftermost funnel , and could not see our taffrail at all . We were then about three miles from the shore , with the indentation of Takhe Bay straight ahead of us , and near enough the anchorage for a man on our signal yard to make out -- before the fog enveloped us , of course -- that there were two ships at anchor in the roadstead , one , a five-funnelled craft which I knew could only be the _ Askold _ , while the other , showing four funnels , I gathered from his description must be the armoured cruiser _ Bayan _ . The searchlight had of course been in action ever since we had made the land , and as its beam swept slowly over the ships it had revealed enough of their details to enable us to easily identify them . It was most exasperating that the fog should have swept down upon us just when it did .