This last question she shot at her husband, who was staring miserably before him.
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” he said, dejectedly. “I declare, I’m quite—quite done up.”
“Well, I know what to do,” she said. “We must look up those mission-house people and have a search-party sent out at once. We can get no satisfaction from these people. Come.”
XXII
It was nearly midnight when Komazawa passed along the shore of Matsushima and began to climb towards the tombs. He knew every inch of the land. Unlike poor, wandering Hyacinth, he passed steadily ahead without the slightest hesitation. He had reached the small cliff path which led to the great Date-rock cavern. Now he was before the rock itself.
Without pausing an instant, holding the lighted lantern he carried above his head, he entered the cavern beneath the rock. Every inch of the ground within he examined, feeling about with his hands in the darkened corners where his lantern could not penetrate. Over and over the same ground he went, fear urging him forward. When the certainty that she was not within the cavern forced itself upon him his shaking frame testified to his agitation.
He had been so certain that the girl would come here. This was the great secret cave he himself had shown to her, where they had spent their childhood together in defiance of the mild remonstrance of the temple priests.
Very slowly now Koma crawled from out the cavern. The lantern he set upon the ground at the mouth of the cave. Then he stood still, uncertain what to do, a great despair coming upon him.
Only a few paces away, he knew, were other tombs and caverns, but these were built in the slanting cliffs, down which no maiden could have gone in safety. Of them he would not think. He dared not look at them, lest he become dizzy with horror. And so Komazawa raised his face upward to the sky, just as Hyacinth had done.