Withdraw, Procession. Dip oars back to the "black ships." Slip cables and depart, for day after day will lapse and nothing can retard a coming Spring.
Panic Winter throughout the "Land of Great Peace." Panic, and haste, wasting energies and accomplishing nothing. Kiōto has heard, and prays, trembling. Priests at the shrine of Isé whine long, slow supplications from dawn to dawn, and through days dropping down again from morning. Iyéyoshi is dead, and Iyésada rules in Yedo; thirteenth Shōgun of the Tokugawa. Rules and struggles, rescinds laws, urges reforms; breathless, agitated endeavours to patch and polish where is only corroding and puffed particles of dust.
It is Winter still in the Bay of Yedo, though the plum-trees of Kamata and Kinagawa are white and fluttering.
Winter, with green, high, angular seas. But over the water, far toward China, are burning the furnaces of three great steamers, and four sailing vessels heel over, with decks slanted and sails full and pulling.
"There's a bit of a lop, this morning. Mr. Jones, you'd better take in those royals."
"Ay, ay, Sir. Tumble up here, men! Tumble up! Lay aloft and stow royals. Haul out to leeward."
"To my,
Ay,
And we'll furl
Ay,
And pay Paddy Doyle for his boots."
"Taut band—knot away."
Chug! Chug! go the wheels of the consorts, salting smoke-stacks with whirled spray.
The Commodore lights a cigar, and paces up and down the quarter-deck of the Powhatan. "I wonder what the old yellow devils will do," he muses.