Two of the guards sprang before him. Midzuano waved them aside. He did not lack courage and courtesy. “The condemned men are free to speak,” he said.
“Midzuano knows that two of the charges against the tojin prisoner are false,” said Yoritomo. “Woroto Sama is not a spy, and no more a member of the evil sect than are the Dutch at Nagasaki, who have not been required to tread upon the cross for a long period. Regarding the third charge, the act confessed, though against the letter of the Shogun’s law, was committed to save the Shogun’s daughter from the shame of captivity. The warships of the prisoner’s august ruler will soon appear off the coast of Nippon. Advice is given that the prisoner be honorably delivered over to the exalted commander of the American fleet!”
“Nagasaki is far from Yedo. The hairy barbarians will hear nothing regarding their countryman,” replied Midzuano, and he signed the warrant.
“The counsellor is wise,” I jeered. “He is well advised to stop the mouths of those who might tell of his share in the ronin plot against the Princess.”
Midzuano looked down the room at me with his dead-alive stare for a full half-minute.
“A false move, brother,” whispered Yoritomo. “Say no more!”
Midzuano picked up the seal. As he stamped it in the ink, the floor quivered as if before the precursor of an earthquake. An instant later the air resounded with the clangorous boom of a mighty bell. It was the alarm note of the great bell at the Temple of Zozoji. Midzuano paused with the seal suspended above our death warrant.
There was a scurry in the anteroom, and a voice cried shrilly: “The barbarians!—the barbarians have come! Woe to Nippon! The black ships enter Yedo Bay!”
Other bells were joining the clamor of their harsher notes to the sonorous thunder from Zozoji.
Without a trace of hesitancy or emotion, Midzuano brought the suspended seal down upon the warrant. The man was samurai bred. He straightened and beckoned to the captain of the hatamoto guard. Perry had come—and in the same hour, this cold-blooded Counsellor would drag us out to shameful execution! I began to draw my revolver.