“I beg you not to think of it, or to say such things. I want only to do my duty, and you have helped me to that.”
“I?” exclaimed Kokan, surprised in his turn. “I helped you? Tell me how.”
“Please do not think me rude,” replied Soichi. “It is hard to explain to you. You were born a Samurai and have an inheritance of honor to maintain. It is natural to you. It comes without thought. It is merely to live in the old way. I was born a Commoner, but the son of one who had been despised as an outcast. The Emperor gave us citizenship. It is to him we owe everything. To win honor is our first duty, for surely that is what he meant when he promoted us. Honor lies in his service. To give him true service, therefore, is all my wish, and if sometimes I have felt that you—that someone was watching closely to catch me in failure, it has helped me to be a better soldier, and perhaps brought me nearer to winning honor.”
Kokan sat like one in a dream. This son of an Eta was telling him things he had heard from his father and read in the books of the Samurai of generations long agone. It was the old doctrine of the Bushi, but he spoke it as if it were his own discovery.
“You talk like a Samurai,” he said, and rising abruptly, went away.
He had caught a glimpse of the soul of honor and it dazzled him. Here was honor for honor’s sake. No other thought, no consideration of self, no hope of reward, no seeking for gain of any sort, the simple effort of a faithful heart to show in loyal, devoted service its gratitude for a great gift. In comparison with the high standard of his life, the teachings of his long line of soldier gentlemen, it was a thing of wonder and amazement. Many hours he pondered it, and from his meditation rose with a new resolve. The service of the Emperor had profited by that talk with the Commoner.
Spring was full-blown. The sun shone with summer warmth and fields and meadows were clothed with green. The leaves hung thickly on the trees, and masses of rhododendrons robed the slopes of the hills in pink. Through all the army ran the whisper of coming action. In the afternoon the men were in their quarters. In the evening, silently and swiftly they moved out. They bivouacked for the night in the little pockets among the low hills close to the water’s edge, and in the starlight ate cold rice from their ration baskets. Then, rolled up in their blankets, they slept, rifles by their sides.
The bark of a gun heralded the coming of the day, and the men rose to see the battle joined. All day they lay in their hollows and heard the hoarse, angry roaring of the guns and the vicious rush of shells, as if a mighty wind beat through the tops of a forest of pines. Darkness fell and the guns ceased their frightful clamor. Then came the order to move.
All night they toiled. As if by miracle they saw the pontoons thrown across the rushing streams, and the lumbering guns swing forward. In the soft sand of the islands they put their shoulders to the wheels the tired horses could not turn, and on the cannon moved into their new positions. The murky gray of early dawn found the Russian hills ringed in front with Japanese steel. The day had come at last when Kutami Soichi was to meet the test.