An officer near Tani who had been divesting himself of his overcoat leapt to his feet with a shout. With an answering roar the trenches seemed to vomit wave upon wave of steel, and yellow-faced, khaki-clad figures. They swept forward, stabbing and cheering, hewing their way through the wire entanglement in the face of a tempest of bullets, leaving their dead dangling as they fell.
Tani reached a line of sandbags at the crest of a rise unhurt, and drove his bayonet into the chest of a German who was clubbing his rifle. He heard the breast-bone crunch as the steel went home to the muzzle of the rifle. The German fell sideways, twisting the weapon out of Tani's grip with his weight. Then Tani saw a bearded officer, the haft of a broken sword dangling from a leather thong at his wrist, struggling to reload his revolver.
As a mongoose jumps for a snake the Japanese leapt at the German's throat. They fell together in the bottom of the trench, and for a moment they fought with their hands, in the welter of mud and water, trampled on by other combatants, breathing in short, savage gasps. Then Tani got the "neck-lock" he had been struggling for. Something snapped with a sound like a dry twig breaking, and the German's head dropped back. Tani sat up, spitting and wiping the mud out of his eyes. His adversary was dead, and lay staring up at the grey sky as if amazed. The bearded lips were drawn back, showing his teeth; one of these sparkled curiously. Save for the dead and wounded, the trench was deserted: the assault had swept forward. Above them was a sound of great cheering. Someone was wedging a colour-staff between the sandbags; the emblem of the Rising Sun, tattered and stained, stirred in the morning breeze. Tsingtau had fallen.
Tani leaned over to examine more closely the phenomenon in the dead man's mouth. Then he emitted an interested grunt. The centre tooth of the German's upper jaw was crowned with a diamond.
3
Tani, maker of sandals, leaned over the parapet of the little cedar-wood bridge that spanned an artificial hike in the temple grounds. Every now and again the moon's placid reflection on the water broke into widening ripples as a carp rose. In the stillness the sound of its feeding was audible—a tiny "gluck!" as if a greedy child were smacking its lips. It was late spring, the season of the cherry-blossom, and the light airs of evening came in puffs across the water, laden with faint fragrance. The doors of the temple stood open: inside, a lamp burned dully before the altar.
After a while the man took from his pocket a little pouch of oiled silk and emptied the contents into his palm. There was some dusty tobacco, two or three matches, and a small object that caught the light as he moved his hand. This he retained, and put the pouch and the rest of its contents back into his pocket.
"Click-click, click-click!" Light, metal-shod sandals were approaching from the direction of the village. A form fluttered towards him out of the darkness like a soft grey moth.
"Have you waited long, Tani?"
"So long, Su Su O, that the night had grown into Eternity, and the sound of my sighing checked the very lamentation of the frogs!"