PART II
Four vessels giving easily to the low-running waves and cat's-paw breezes of a Summer sea. July, 1853, Mid-Century, but just on the turn. Mid-Century, with the vanishing half fluttering behind on a foam-bubbled wake. Four war ships steering for the "Land of Great Peace," caparisoned in state, cleaving a jewelled ocean to a Dragon Gate. Behind it, the quiet of afternoon. Golden light reflecting from the inner sides of shut portals. War is an old wives' tale, a frail beautiful embroidery of other ages. The panoply of battle fades. Arrows rust in arsenals, spears stand useless on their butts in vestibules. Cannon lie unmounted in castle yards, and rats and snakes make nests in them and rear their young in unmolested satisfaction.
The sun of Mid-Summer lies over the "Land of Great Peace," and behind the shut gate they do not hear the paddle-wheels of distant vessels unceasingly turning and advancing, through the jewelled scintillations of the encircling sea.
Susquehanna and Mississippi, steamers, towing Saratoga and Plymouth, sloops of war. Moving on in the very eye of the wind, with not a snip of canvas upon their slim yards. Fugi!—a point above nothing, for there is a haze. Stop gazing, that is the bugle to clear decks and shot guns. We must be prepared, as we run up the coast straight to the Bay of Yedo. "I say, fellows, those boats think they can catch us, they don't know that this is Yankee steam." Bang! The shore guns are at work. And that smoke-ball would be a rocket at night, but we cannot see the gleam in this sunshine.
Black with people are the bluffs of Uraga, watching the "fire-ships," lipping windless up the bay. Say all the prayers you know, priests of Shinto and Buddha. Ah! The great splashing of the wheels stops, a chain rattles. The anchor drops at the Hour of the Ape.
A clock on the Commodore's chest of drawers strikes five with a silvery tinkle.
Boats are coming from all directions. Beautiful boats of unpainted wood, broad of beam, with tapering sterns, and clean runs. Swiftly they come, with shouting rowers standing to their oars. The shore glitters with spears and lacquered hats. Compactly the boats advance, and each carries a flag—white-black-white—and the stripes break and blow. But the tow-lines are cast loose when the rowers would make them fast to the "black ships," and those who would climb the chains slip back dismayed, checked by a show of cutlasses, pistols, pikes. "Naru Hodo!" This is amazing, unprecedented! Even the Vice-Governor, though he boards the Susquehanna, cannot see the Commodore. "His High Mighty Mysteriousness, Lord of the Forbidden Interior," remains in his cabin. Extraordinary! Horrible!
Rockets rise from the forts, and their trails of sparks glitter faintly now, and their bombs break in faded colours as the sun goes down.
Bolt the gate, monkey-men, but it is late to begin turning locks so rusty and worn.
Darkness over rice-fields and hills. The Gold Gate hides in shadow. Upon the indigo-dark water, millions of white jelly-fish drift, like lotus-petals over an inland lake. The land buzzes with prayer, low, dim smoke hanging in air; and every hill gashes and glares with shooting fires. The fire-bells are ringing in double time, and a heavy swinging boom clashes from the great bells of temples. Couriers lash their horses, riding furiously to Yedo; junks and scull-boats arrive hourly at Shinagawa with news; runners, bearing dispatches, pant in government offices. The hollow doors of the Great Gate beat with alarms. The charmed Dragon Country shakes and trembles, Iyéyoshi, twelfth Shōgun of the Tokugawa line, sits in his city. Sits in the midst of one million, two hundred thousand trembling souls, and his mind rolls forward and back like a ball on a circular runway, and finds no goal. Roll, poor distracted mind of a sick man. What can you do but wait, trusting in your Dragon Gate, for how should you know that it is rusted.