The Shogun's Daughter

by Robert Ames Bennet

He thanked me with almost effusive gratitude, yet with a nobility of look that dignified the Oriental obsequiousness of his words and manner. To cut short his thanks, I went out for a second bottle of wine. He had drunk his share of the first with gusto. Returning briskly, I caught sight of my guest’s face for the first time without its pleasant smile. It was drawn and haggard with fatigue. Putting aside the wine, I asked him if he did not wish to turn in. He signed that he would lie down upon the floor. But I explained the use of a bed, which seemed an absolute novelty to him, and bundled him into my berth before he could protest. He fell asleep almost as his head sank upon the pillow.

I stowed his dunnage in a locker, and hastened to extinguish the lamp and open the window, for the room was suffocatingly hot. As I leaned out of the window I caught a glimpse of one of the guard-boats sculling leisurely across the belt of light between the Sea Flight and Kagoshima. Yoritomo’s boat had evidently drifted away through their cordon undetected. Five minutes later I was outstretched on a locker, as fast asleep as my guest.

I awoke with what I took to be a crash of thunder dinning in my ears. But the bright glare of sunshine that poured in through the stern windows told of a clear sky. No less unmistakable was the loud shouting of commands on the deck above me and the sharp heeling of the ship to port. The Sea Flight was already under way and her crew piling on more sail as swiftly as Downing and his bucko mates could drive them with volleying oaths and orders.

As I sprang to my feet the explanation of the situation quickly came in the barking roar of an old-style twelve-pounder carronade. This was my supposed thunder. During the night the Satsuma men had either brought up a gun-boat or placed a battery on the nearest point of land, and now they had at last opened fire on the tojin ship that refused to leave after due warning.

I stared out the nearest window, and sighted our guard-boats of the night, sculling along in our wake, not a biscuit’s throw distant. Their gunners stood by the little swivels, slow-match in hand, and the soldiers held their antique muskets trained upon us. But the firing was all from the shore. A puff of smoke showed me where the carronade was concealed behind a long stretch of canvas upon a point near the lower end of Kagoshima. The ball plunged into the water half a cable’s length short of us.

Before the gunners could reload, the Sea Flight drew off on the starboard tack with swiftly gathering headway, and drew out of range. The crews of the guard-boats were for a time able to keep their swift clipper-built craft close astern, but the ship, once under full sail, soon began to outdistance her pursuers.

The purpose of the Japanese became clear to me when I saw them lay down their arms without giving over the pursuit. They had no desire to harm us, but were inflexibly determined to drive us out of their port. And follow us they did, though long before we had tacked down into the mouth of the great bay they were visible only through a glass, as little black dots bobbing among the whitecaps.

Yoritomo had roused from his profound sleep as we came about for the first time to tack off the Osumi shore. When I had returned his smiling salute, he listened to my account of our flight with quiet satisfaction, and explained that, since we had not left peaceably, the Satsuma men were compelled to resort to these forceful measures. Otherwise their lord, though in Yedo, would be punished for permitting our ship to remain in his harbor.

While my guest then took a morning bath, I closed the door between my staterooms, and ordered the steward to serve me a hearty breakfast in the vacant room. When he had gone, I locked the door and called in Yoritomo, whom I had assisted to dress in his Occidental garments. Thus attired, and with my smoking-cap over his cue, he might easily have passed for an Italian or Spanish gentleman had it not been for the slant of his eyes.

After we had breakfasted, we found seats beside one of the sternports, and spent the morning viewing the receding scenery of the bay and conversing in our inverted Dutch. Eager as I was to make inquiries about my friend and his country, he showed still greater curiosity regarding myself and the wide world from which his people had been cut off for so long a period. The result was that by midday I had told him a vast deal, and gathered in turn a mere handful of vaguely stated facts.