DASTARDLY ATTACKS 
241 
priate, so far as my experience goes. Our assailants 
had the former experience, and were unhurt, whilst 
we got the latter, with disastrous results. 
With regard to my immunity from wounds, on 
my return to Yokohama I was relating my experience 
to a German friend who had been through the 
Franco-German War, and he asked me if I wore 
knitted woollen underclothing, as, he said, it had 
been constantly noticed that, during their fights, 
many who wore heavy knitted underclothing had 
bullets pass through their outer garments, as in my 
case, without doing further damage. It was sup¬ 
posed that the knitted surface of the garment, when 
struck at an angle, deflected the bullet in some way. 
Whether this supposition is correct or not I do not 
know, but I was wearing, over my shirt and beneath 
my coat and waistcoat, a knitted football jersey. 
The lining of my waistcoat was cut in several places 
by three of the bullets, but only one pierced the 
jersey, and that was where a fold chanced to be across 
the stomach. 
Some few shots had been fired at the boat next 
outside mine, one man being hit in the forearm, the 
bone of which was slightly fractured. This boat, 
however, soon got out of range. 
Leaving the Bering Sea, we sailed back to the 
Kuril Islands, calling in at Little Kuril Strait to 
take away the men left there. We found they had 
gone, having, as I afterwards learned, been taken 
on board the schooner Rose , which happened to put 
into Ottomai Bay a short time after we sailed. I 
then set sail for Nemuro, on the east coast of Yezo, 
as being the first available place where proper surgical 
assistance could be obtained, and where the wounded 
16 
