As Otaka withdrew with the empty cups, we rose to continue our inspection of the wonders of the shop. There were ivories of all descriptions. Here was a two-handled sword, with a very large ivory handle, a weirdly carved scabbard, and wonderful steel blade. By the expression of Craig’s face, Sato knew that he had made a sale.
Craig had been rummaging among some warlike instruments which Sato, with the instincts of a true salesman, was now displaying, and had picked up a bow. It was short, very strong, and made of pine wood. He held it horizontally and twanged the string. I looked up in time to catch a pleased expression on the face of Otaka.
“Most people would have held it the other way,” commented Sato.
Craig said nothing, but was examining an arrow, almost twenty inches long and thick, made of cane, with a point of metal very sharp but badly fastened. He fingered the deep blood groove in the scooplike head of the arrow and looked at it carefully.
“I’ll take that,” he said, “only I wish it were one with the regular reddish-brown lump in it.”
“Oh, but, honorable sir,” apologized Sato, “the Japanese law prohibits that, now. There are few of those, and they are very valuable.”
“I suppose so,” agreed Craig. “This will do, though. You have a wonderful shop here, Sato. Some time, when I feel richer, I mean to come in again. No, thank you, you need not send them; I’ll carry them.”
We bowed ourselves out, promising to come again when Sato received a new consignment from the Orient which he was expecting.
“That other Jap is a peculiar fellow,” I observed, as we walked along uptown again.
“He isn’t a Jap,” remarked Craig. “He is an Ainu, one of the aborigines who have been driven northward into the island of Yezo.”