While we were ashore, a typhoon came up, and the Logan dragged her anchors, and came near to piling up on the breakwater. Several Japanese coaling the transports from barges, were drowned.
On our return from Sapporo we found the roofs of Otaru rather dislocated, a high wind still blowing, and no chance to get back to ship that night. So some of us slept in the native hotel of the town, and enjoyed the novelty of sitting on the floor for a Japanese breakfast, while cross crows in a garden cawed at us and the gold fish swam in the pretty pool of the court. The rickshawmen gleaned fortunes from nearly a thousand soldiers on holiday with plenty of money to spend.
That morning was rainy, and the streets were deep with mud. Coming down to pay my hotel bill, I found a tall, lanky Kentuckian in an argument with the proprietor, who, of course, spoke no English. The lieutenant in command of the military police, a man who spoke several languages, was doing his best to straighten out the difficulty, while the Kentuckian, in his gray woolen socks, held up a pair of muddy shoes which he regarded with contempt, the while displaying a marvellously wicked vocabulary.
I lingered to see what it was all about. The Kentuckian modified his language in my presence, which I rather deplored, for it was chilly in that entrance and his remarks raised the temperature. On entering a Japanese house or hotel, one must remove shoes and put on slippers. Some fifteen or twenty shore-bound soldiers had remained at the hotel. When they came down in the morning, they found their heavy marching shoes stiff from the mud of the previous day, and shrunken. The result was that the first applicants for shoes in the morning preferred the larger sizes, and took such as fit them, regardless of who happened to own them.
The Kentuckian appeared to be the last one down, and all that was left for him in the way of footwear was one pair of wet shoes, size six. When I came to look at his feet, I understood his predicament—he wore at least size eleven. I got into a corner and had a discreet laugh. For years before I had been in Japan with troops when I was not a captain, and had some appreciation of the pranks of the enlisted men.
“What you ought to do,” I said, keeping as straight a face as possible, “is to get a pair of Japanese geta, and walk to the ship in them—they will keep you out of the mud.”
He looked at the wooden footwear I pointed out, with cleats under the soles four inches high, and snorted, feeling that he could take liberties with an officer who seemed so neighborly.
“I ain’t hankerin’ none to walk on them damned stilts, capting,” he said, and I gave up all ideas of having any amusement from seeing him navigate through the mud with his big toes thrust through the straps of the wooden sandals. Secretly, I hoped he would attempt it, and lose the sandals in the mud.
“Then take a rickshaw,” I suggested. “If you’re out of money, I’ll pay for it.”
“Couldn’t git me to ride in none of them baby carriages,” he said, and holding out the pair of infantile shoes to the Japanese proprietor, demanded wrathfully that his own shoes be produced.