I immediately sent orders to the two fast cruisers, which were lying with steam up, to go to sea and reconnoitre.
Suddenly I heard people on shore calling out (I forgot to mention that ships in Batoum harbour are always lashed to the shore).

I sent my officer to reconnoitre, who found a gaping crowd standing round what they thought was a large fish lashing his tail, but what in reality was an unexploded torpedo with the screw still in motion.

On things being calm I went myself to see what had happened generally during the attack, and found that a torpedo had struck the bows of one of the ironclads on the belt, at the waterline at an angle, had exploded, and scarcely left a mark; that a second torpedo had, after passing through the planks on the defensive barrier I had placed, _diverged from its course_, and gone quietly on shore as far as the left of the squadron; that a third, as I said, had struck the chain of the flagship and not gone off, but had run on to the beach.

The parts of another torpedo were afterwards picked up, it evidently having exploded somewhere down below.

So we could account for four torpedoes having been fired at us without effect; probably there were more.