“Go on way!” he growled, in the first English I had heard from his lips. “Go on way an’ leave us to sleep.”
“I call the police,” repeated the native.
“Bloody thunder, police!” bawled my partner, sitting up. “Go on way or I break your face.”
The Jap left hastily.
“Close the shutters,” continued the Chilian, in his own tongue. “Too early to get up yet. That fellow is from the French consul, who has charge of this place. He disturbs us every morning, but he can do nothing.”
Two hours later the Chilian stowed away his property. When the coast was clear, we climbed the gate and returned to the Home.
Life on the beach in Yokohama might have grown monotonous in the days that followed but for the necessity of an incessant scramble for rice and fishes. Out beyond the park were a score of native shops where a Gargantuan feast of rice and stewed niku—meat of uncertain antecedents—sold for a song. There were times, of course, when we had not even a song between us; but in the Chinese quarters nearer the harbor, queued shopkeepers offered an armful of Oriental fruits and the thin strips of roasted pork popularly known as “rat-tails” for half a vocal effort. Or, failing this, there were the vendors of soba, who appeared with their push-carts as dusk fell, demanding only two sen for a bowl of this Japanese macaroni swimming in greasy water, and the use of a badly-worn pair of chopsticks. The Chilian was versatile, I had been “busted” before; between us we rarely failed to find the means of patronizing at least the street vendors before retreating to Russian territory.
Never had I doubted, on the day of my stroll back from Tokyo, that the end of August would find me again in “the States.” By the time I had learned to vault the consulate gate as noiselessly as the Chilian, the Pacific seemed a far greater barrier. For shipping was dull in Yokohama; the shipping, that is, of white seamen. That day was rare in which at least one ship did not weigh anchor; but their crews were Oriental. His book might be swollen with honorable discharges, his stubby fingers nimble at making knots and splices; but plain Jack Tar from the western world was left to knock his heels on the long stone jetty and hurl stentorian oaths at each departing craft.
A “windjammer,” requiring a new crew, would have solved many personal problems; and there were three such vessels, two full-rigged ships and a bark, riding at anchor far out beyond the breakwater. But as far back as the oldest beachcomber could remember, they had showed no signs of life, and their gaunt masts and bare yards had long since come to be as permanent fixtures in the landscape as the eternal hills beyond. Moreover, rumor had it that the crafts were full-handed. Now and then a pair of their apprentices dropped into the Home of an evening; more than one of “the boys,” skirmishing for breakfast in the gray of dawn, had come upon the light of one of their crews on his beams’ ends in the gutter of the undignified district beyond the canal. But sober or besotted, not a man of them dreamed of clearing out; and “the boys” had long since given up all hope of being called to fill a vacancy.
I had, of course, lost no time in making known my existence at the American consulate. Captains were not unknown in the legation; not many moons since, a man had actually been signed on in that very building! Each interview with the genial consul was full of good cheer; yet, as a really satisfying portion, good cheer was infinitely inferior to a bowl of soba. Between pursuing that elusive substance through the streets of Yokohama and over her suburban hills, and wiping our feet on the mats of steamship offices of high and low degree, neither the Chilian nor I found cause to complain of the inactivity of existence.