Yuki approached, with his hands in his sleeves, and sought to edge up beside me. I divined that he schemed to slip me one or both of my revolvers. But Keiki was keen-eyed and vigilant. He thrust himself between us. With the swordbearer on the other side, I walked out through the state gate of Owari Yashiki, into the midst of the mail-clad samurais of Mito and Hitotsubashi.
CHAPTER XXXI—In the Power of Mito
At the command of Keiki, men with iron gloves seized me and stripped me of my brocaded wedding robes. Bound hand and foot, I was flung into a kago and a net entwined about me. I was spared the shame of daylight, but torches and lanterns exposed the white-skinned captive to all who chose to look and revile.
They bore me along the outer moat to Mito Yashiki and through the great gate into the grim torture chamber. Without loosening the rattan withes that cut my flesh, they dropped me into a dungeon pit built beneath the stone floor of the chamber. I was flung in headlong, but managed to turn in the air and alight upon my feet. Otherwise I believe the fall would have proved fatal. Had I been stunned, I must have smothered in the ankle-deep slime that covered the bottom of the pit.
Even as it was, I could not hold my balance with my bound feet, squarely as I struck. I sprawled prone in the filth. As I struggled up to a sitting position, Keiki flung down a torch at me. The flaming end tore and seared the skin of my naked side and glanced down into the slime with a loud splutter.
“Hear the snarl of the tojin beast!” he jeered. “We have been told much of frogs in the well. Mito can now tell of the toad in the pit.”
With this a great stone was clapped over the mouth of the dungeon, and I was left to the misery of my fetid quarters and the anguish of my thoughts. The moistening of my bonds in the slime eased somewhat the pain of their incutting edges. But nothing could ease my mental agony.
Since the first I had been as it were dazed by the disaster that had befallen me. Now I no longer had the presence of my enemy to sustain the anger that had added to my bewilderment. Cold horror dampened my fury even as the dank air of the dungeon chilled my fevered body. As my brain cooled I began to realize with frightful clearness the full measure of my downfall. One hour, Prince of Owari, in all Yedo second to none other than the Shogun,—the next, a despised barbarian toad in this pit of filth. One hour, the bridegroom of the Shogun’s daughter,—the next, an outcast menaced with atrocious torture and infamous execution.