The two men had stayed behind for another hour or so, waiting for a visible change in the weather, when Shinsuké concluded that it would be a long waiting that brought no reward. There was his unexpressed concern for Tsuya, too. He declared himself as going, sure as he was to be drenched. It was suggested that he should take the palanquin; for, Santa could just as well take his boat over to a place for the night and follow later on foot. Shinsuké would not hear of the offer, insisting to share with him the lot of the rainy journey by foot.
“Well, it might not be so dreadfully bad, after all,” Santa said in agreeing. “For a good walker, it’ll be just a nice little run over to Takabashi. We can borrow umbrellas here. Suppose then we just tuck up our clothes smart, and run down along the riverside way.”
Santa congratulated that there was no wind abroad, as he possessed himself of a lantern proffered by the tea house and prepared himself to lead the way. Shinsuké took up at the end of a rope a box that was to be for Tsuya’s benefit, a part and parcel of the memory of the feast of the evening. They had their clogs secured on themselves, each making fast his own pair by passing the end of the sash across below the lace supports on the footgear. Their limbs bared up to the knees, they started out from Kawacho’s.
They spoke not to each other; for they gave all their mind to the rain and darkness through which they battered their way. Only a little way down the line ere they were drenched through. Up to the end of the Ryogoku-bashi bridge; thence to the right, and now out in front of the mansion of the Lord Hosokawa. Almost in the next instant, Santa gave a little startled cry when his lantern had been blown out;—a wind should have been expected on the water front. At this late hour of night, there was neither traffic nor life to give them a light along this riverside road which was never lively or cheerful, and which was now desolated by the stormy rain. After the light was blown out, darkness pressed on them with a grim force, as if it threatened to suck them into its abysmal pitch. And was it a trick of their own minds that even the rain now appeared to beat upon their ears with a greater intensity of jarring note?
“I am sailing all right in the dark, but you should look out for yourself, Shin don,” Santa was howling the warning. “You have drunk rather heavy to-night, don’t you know?” And heavy had he drunk, it was true; as much as three pints, as he could make out. His host and Santa, out of their apparent concern for his condition, repeatedly asked him, saying, “Are you all right yet?” However, he found himself in no worse a condition than a first flush; his feet hugged the earth firm and steady at each step. In fact, it was rather his companion, he thought, that needed care.
“No danger here,—but you’re far worse off, do you know it?” He was straining his voice to shout back his answer. And it was probably deadened by the noise of the ruffled stream; for Santa gave no response.
There intervened a few moments of silence. They had covered about five or six yards in silence when, all of a sudden, a crisp voice snapped, right under his nose, in an unexpected taunt—
“No more words out of your foul mouth, you drunken fool!”
Shinsuké was scarcely given the time to reason out the challenge which was not to be imagined as coming from Santa. For, almost as instantly, the cold point of a blade slashed into his shoulder. A quick twist of the body had saved him from anything serious, he felt. But a sudden paralysis ran over the right half of his neck, and upward, a deadened feeling, as ripped by sharp nails, and half of his face was so deadened in the same side as if it had been snapped off.
“Who’s this? Speak!” shouted Shinsuké, as he strove to steady his tottering feet for a quick run.