That morning had seen his first trial of his new fan-propeller, and the Glider's action had surpassed his wildest expectation. The flight, of which Barbara had caught a glimpse from Thorn's garden, had been a longer one than usual—quite twelve miles against a sluggish upper current—but even that failed to bring its customary glow. Thereafter he had spent a long morning immersed in the work of the Chancery: the study of a disputed mining concession in Manchuria; a report on a contemplated issue of government bonds; a demand for a passport by a self-alleged national with a foreign accent and a paucity of naturalization papers; the daily budget of translations from vernacular newspapers, by which a home government gains a bird's-eye view of comment and public opinion in far-away capitals. The Chancery was a pleasant nest of rooms opening into one another. Through its windows stole the smell of the garden blossoms, and across the compound wall sounded the shrill ventriloquistic notes of peddlers, the brazen chorus of a marching squad of buglers, or the warning "Hek! Hek!" of a flying rick'sha. The main room was cool, furnished with plain desks and filing cabinets. Against one wall yawned a huge safe in which were kept the code-books and records, and framed pictures of former Chiefs of Mission hung on the walls. In the anteroom Japanese clerks and messengers sat at small tables. The place was pervaded by the click of type-writer keys, tinkling call-bells, and the various notes of a busy office, and floating down from a stairway came the buzzing monotone of a Student Interpreter in his mid-year oral examinations under the Japanese secretary.
But to-day Daunt could not exorcise with the mass of detail the leering imps that plagued him. They peered at him over the edge of the code-books and whispered from the margins of decorous despatches, chuckling satirically.
"Barbara!" they sneered. "Mere acquaintances often name steam-yachts for girls, don't they! Arrived the same day as her ship, eh? Rather singular coincidence! What a flush she had when Voynich spoke of Phil's brother last night at the tea-house. Angry? Of course she was! What engaged girl likes to have the fact paraded—especially when she's practising on another man? And how about the telegram? How long have you known her, by the way? Two days? Really, now!"
The weekly governmental pouch had closed at noon, and pouch-days were half-holidays, but Daunt did not go to the Embassy. An official letter had arrived from Washington which must be delivered in Kamakura. Daunt seized this excuse, plunged ferociously into tweeds and an hour afterward found himself in a railway carriage thudding gloomily toward the lower bay. In his heart he knew that he was trying to run away—from something that nevertheless traveled with him.
The sky was palely blue, without a cloud, but the bay, where the rails skirted it, was heaving in long swells of oily amethyst like a vast carpet shaken at a distance in irregular undulations, on which junk with flapping, windless sails, of the deep gold color of old straw, tumbled like ungainly sea-spiders. The western hills looked misty and uncertain, and Fuji was wrapped in a wraith-like mist into which its glimmering profile disappeared.
At a way-station a coolie with a huge tray piled with neat, flat, wooden boxes passed the window calling "Ben-to! Ben-to!" It reminded Daunt that he had had no luncheon, and he bought one. He had long ago accustomed himself to Japanese food and liked it, but to-day the two shallow sections inspired no appetite. The half which held the rice he viciously threw out of the window and unrolling the fresh-cut chop-sticks from their paper square, rummaged discontentedly among the contents of the other: dried cuttlefish, bean-curd, slices of boiled lily-bulb, cinnamon-sticks, lotos stems and a coil of edible seaweed, all wrapped in green leaves. In the end, the mélange followed the rice.
At Kamakura an immediate answer to the letter he brought was not forthcoming, and to kill the time he strolled far down the curved beach. The usual breeze was lacking. A haze as fine as gossamer had drawn itself over the sky, and through it gulls were calling plaintively. Here and there on the sea-wall women were spreading fish-nets, and along the causeway trudged blue-legged peasant-women, their backs bent beneath huge loads of brushwood. In one place a bronze-faced fisherman in a fantastic kimono on which was painted sea-monsters and hobgoblins in crimson and orange, seated on the gunwale of his sampan drawn above the shingle, watched a little girl who, with clothing clutched thigh-high, was skipping the frothy ripples as if they were ropes of foam. A mile from the town he met a regiment of small school-boys, in indigo-blue and white kimono, marching two and two like miniature soldiers, a teacher in European dress at either end of the line—future Oyamas, Togos and Kurokis in embryo.
They were coming from Enoshima, the hill-island that rises in the bay like an emerald St. Michael, where in a rocky cave, looking seaward, dwells holy Ben-ten, the Buddhist Goddess of Love. Daunt could see its masses of dark green foliage with their pink veinings of cherry-trees, and the crawling line of board-walk, perched on piling, which gave access from the mainland when the tide was in. On its height, if anywhere, would be coolness. He filled his pipe and set off toward it along the sultry sand. The hot dazzle of the sun was in his face. There was no movement in the crisp leaves of the bamboo trees and the damp heat beat up stiflingly from the gray glare. Somewhere in the air, stirless and humid, there rested a faint, weedy smell like a steaming sea-growth in a tidal ooze.
Daunt's pipe sputtered feebly, and, girding at the heat, he hurled it at a handful of blue ducks that plashed tiredly in the gray-green heave, and watched them dive, to reappear far away, like bobbing corks. He wished he could as easily scatter the blue-devils that dogged him.
He drew a sigh of relief as he reached the long elevated board-walk and shook the sand from his shoes. Underneath its shore-end a fisherman sat in the stern of a boat fishing with cormorants. A row of the solemn birds sat on a pole projecting over the water, each tethered by a string whose end was tied to the man's wrist. They seemed to be asleep, but now and then one would plunge like a diver, to reappear with a fish wriggling in its beak. Daunt watched them listlessly a moment, then, passing beneath a great bronze torii, he slowly climbed the single shaded street that staggered up the hill between the multitudes of gay little shops running over with colored sea-shells, with grotesque lanterns made of inflated fish-skins, with carved crystal and pink and white coral—up and up, by old, old flights of mossy steps, under more ancient trees, by green monuments and lichen-stippled Buddhas, till the sea below crawled like a wrinkled counterpane. Daunt knew a tea-house on the very lip of the cliff, the Kinki-ro—"Inn of the Golden Turtle"—and he bent his steps lazily in its direction.