By mid-afternoon we cleared the last of the guard-boats off Cape Sagami. Before us opened the broad gulf of the outer bay, beyond which rolled the illimitable expanse of the Pacific,—the broad lap of Freedom! We had won our way out of the clutches of Mito.
I set our course between the smoking mass of Vries Island and the distant coast of Idzu and ordered the studding-sails struck. We had now only to coast down Hondo and Shikoku and Kyushu to Cape Satanomi before the steady drive of the northeast monsoon,—a rough voyage against the Japan Current in any craft, yet one fairly safe at this season even for our unwieldy junk. The typhoon season was past.
I went down into the cabin, where mats had been laid and silk drapes hung for the son of Owari. There, alone in the largest room, I found the Shogun’s daughter, waiting to salute and serve her lord. She kowtowed before me, her forehead upon her tiny hands. I bent and caught her up in my arms, and pressed my lips upon her little mouth, after the manner of the tojins.
CHAPTER XXXIV—Conclusion
The last page of my narrative is finished. I lay it aside with the others and gaze out through the open balcony of my tower room upon the majestically beautiful stretch of Kagoshima Bay. From this pagoda eyrie I can look with equal ease down the blue gulf and upon the gray roofs of the city beneath the castle height.
There, in the mouth of the inlet, off the volcanic island in the head of the bay, is the anchorage where the Sea Flight lay that eventful night for Fate to send me my brother Yoritomo.
My thoughts wander from the classroom below me where, as honorable and honored teacher of the tojin learning, I instruct the young samurais of my great friend Satsuma. I pass in rapid review those eventful months in Yedo. I recall the sacrifice of my dear friend and rejoice to know that the years promise a maturing of good fruit from the seed sown by his spirit and watered with his blood. I recall how even Mito and the cautious Abe were forced to accept the treaty they abhorred, by the menace of Perry’s black ships, in the Spring of fifty-four.
The brother of the sweetest woman on earth or in Heaven still sits on the stool of the Sei-i-tai Shogun. But now Ii Kamon-no-kami the Great Elder holds the place of Abe, and seconds the efforts of the wise first consul to Japan, the American Townsend Harris. Word has come that the treaty for the opening of ports to commerce and intercourse will be signed. The Shogunate and feudalism verge towards their inevitable fall. But the truth must penetrate to the ears of our sacred Mikado through the age-old barriers of ignorance and prejudice. I see a new Japan.