He noticed the promise of heat in the air; he noted the great fall of cherry-blossoms that had occurred during the night; he noted the lantern that Campanula had hung on the hook.
Then he left the veranda, came down into the garden path, and through the gate.
Outside the gate there was a little by-path that led upwards and to the left, between a double bank of bushes to an open space like a natural platform, from which a splendid view of the harbor and hills could be obtained, A great camellia tree forty feet high grew here, alone in its splendor, and beneath it he stood gazing at the harbor.
He could hear the faint monosyllabic cry of the brown hawks ever circling above the blue water, and the distant sound of a drum from the Rurik where she lay at anchor. He could see the sampans shooting hither and thither, carrying fruit and what not to the ships in the anchorage, and the Junks floating like brown phantoms past the shadow of the opposite cliffs.
But his eye was searching for something that was not there.
He looked at his watch, put it back in his pocket with an impatient gesture, and continued to gaze.
Suddenly—Hrr-’mph!—Haa-aar!—the blast of a syren came shouting up the harbor, and chasing the echoes through the hills. The brown hawks rose and circled in wild flight, and past a bend came a great, white, double-funneled steamer.
It was the Canadian Pacific boat, the Empress of Japan, touching at Nagasaki, and due to leave the morning following for Yokohama and Vancouver.
He watched her for a moment as she swam to her berth, beautiful and graceful as a swan. Then he turned to the house.
To-morrow morning he and Jane would be on board that boat, bound northward up the Inland Sea, past Tsu-shima, past Osaka, past Yokohama, and away across the blue Pacific to Vancouver.