CHAPTER XXVI
THE BROKEN LATH
A heat wave from the Pacific had stolen over Nagasaki, and the windless night was filled with stars and lights.
Stars in the sky, and stars in the harbor, long wavy reflections of light from the ships in the anchorage, and ten thousand lanterns spangling the mysterious city.
A spangle of colored lamps that spread away to the base of the O Suwa hill which they stormed, covering it with a thousand sparkles like phosphoric sea-spray, and cresting its summit with a burning zone, bright as the snow crest of Fuji.
It was a gala night, and the O Suwa, that galaxy of temples, had called the true believers in love and beauty to worship in the name of religion.
From the great double temple, which is the crowning glory of the hill, Leslie and his companions looked down upon shrine after shrine, broad flights of steps stained with the soft amber and pink of lantern light, and the colored crowd ever shifting, and murmurous as the sea.
The shadow spaces and the vagueness of night made great distances in this dim but splendid picture, till the moon, rising over the hill-top, chased the shadows away, paled the lamps, and drew the distances together.