The port was bustling with activity. Sampans, in which stood policemen in snow-white uniforms, scurried towards us. Close at hand two dull grey battle ships scowled out across the roadstead. Doctors, custom officers, and gendarmes crowded on board. For the first time in months I was sensible of being in a civilized country. In consequence there were formalities without number to be gone through; but a sailor’s discharge is a passport in any land. By blazing noonday I had stepped ashore.
CHAPTER XXI
WANDERING IN JAPAN
“Set me down at the Sailors’ Home,” I ordered, stepping into the first ’rickshah to reach me.
“No good,” answered the runner, dropping the shafts. “Sailor Home he close.”
“We’ll go and see,” I replied, knowing the ways of ’rickshah-men.
But the Home was unoccupied, sure enough, and its windows boarded up. The runner assumed the attitude of a man who had been insulted without reason.
“Me know ver’ fine hotel,” he said, haughtily, “Many white sailor man stop. Me takee there. Ver’ fine.”
I acquiesced, and he jogged out along the strand driveway and halfway round the sparkling harbor. Near the top of one of the ridges on which Nagasaki is built he halted at the foot of a flight of stone steps cut in a hillside.
“Hotel topside,” he panted, pointing upward.
In the perfumed grove at the summit stood a house so frail and dainty that it seemed a toy dwelling. Its courtyard was gay with nodding flowers, about the veranda posts twined red-blossomed vines. In the doorway stood a Japanese woman, buxom, yet pretty. Though her English was halting, her welcome was most cordial. She led the way to a quaintly decorated chamber, arranged cushions, and bade me sit down. I laid aside my bundle and gazed out across the panorama of the harbor, delicate in coloring; a scene rarely equaled in any clime. Fortunate, indeed, had I been to find so charming a lodging.