On being disappointed in finding what she wanted at sea, the Russian vessel steamed towards the anchorage off Sulina.

As the weather was bad, her commander decided not to attack, and I fancy had to cast off his torpedo boats.
One of these boats, if not more (I have never been able to ascertain precisely what happened to the five torpedo boats that left Odessa), made a dash at the Turkish squadron; the weather not permitting him to use his Whitehead, he decided to try what his pole torpedo would do.

As he approached the head-most vessel, he found (as he explained afterwards to me) that _something_ stopped his way, and he saw at the same time several black objects approaching him.

Nothing daunted, he struggled to get close to the bows of the ironclad; when he got as near as he could manage he fired his torpedo, without, however, doing any harm to his enemy.

Scarcely had he done this when he found himself in the water and his boat gone from under him: the real facts being that the black objects he had seen were the guard-boats, which were closing on him, the ropes that connected them together having fouled his screw, and caused the disaster; his boat was capsized and went to the bottom.