Once clear of the strait, out in the open waters of the Pacific, we packed on all sail to outdrive the heavy following sea, and entered upon the run of over five hundred miles along the southeast coasts of Kiushiu, Shikoku, and Hondo, the main island. Though the weather continued wet and foggy, we were favored by a half gale from the south and by the drift of the Japan Current, which here flows little less swiftly than does our Gulf Stream off Hatteras.
Regardless of the whales which we frequently sighted, our skipper, true to his agreement, held on under full sail, night and day, until we made a landfall of Cape Idzu, the southernmost point of the great promontory which lies southwest of Yedo Bay. We could not have desired conditions more favorable to enable us to approach the coast unobserved. Night was coming on and the gale freshening, but there was no fog. Our skipper shortened sail, and stood boldly in between the east coast of Idzu and the chain of islands trending southward from the mouth of the outer Bay of Yedo.
Had the gale fallen at sundown, I might have persuaded the skipper to hold on across and land us on the west coast of Awa, off the mouth of the inner bay. Unfortunately the wind moderated so little and the sky became so overcast that he ran in under the lee of the great hulking volcano laid down on the charts as Vries Island, but by Yoritomo called Oshima.
We were here in the mouth of the outer bay, and the skipper stated that he was prepared to fulfil his contract by landing us on the island. When I protested against being thus marooned, he declared that he would put us ashore on Vries Island or nowhere. At this I demanded that he run up the outer bay and set us adrift in his gig. He declared that to do so would be sheer murder, since no boat could outride the billows in the open bay. However, an offer of half of Yoritomo’s Japanese gold coins altered his opinion, and the appearance of the rising moon, which began to glimmer at intervals through the scurrying clouds, enabled us to persuade him that he could run up to within the southern point of Awa and beat out again without endangering his ship.
The moment he ordered the ship brought about, Yoritomo and I hastened to prepare ourselves for the landing by shifting into our Yamabushi, or mountain-priest robes, which with other articles of costume we had obtained from the Japanese at Cha-pu. We had been dressing each other’s hair in the Japanese fashion and shaving clean ever since the passage of Van Diemen Strait. Our dunnage was already lashed together in two compact bundles, wrapped about with many thicknesses of waterproof oiled paper.
To the outside of the bundles, I now tied my revolvers and Yoritomo his sword and dirk, all alike wrapped in oil paper, together with two pairs of straw sandals and black leggings and our deep-brimmed basket hats of coarse-wove rattan. The night was far too wild for us to risk being flung into the breakers with any unnecessary weight about us. That we might not be hampered by our loose dress, we bound up our long sleeves to our shoulders and tucked the skirts of the robes through the back of our girdles.
When we went up on the deck with our dunnage, a gleam of moonlight showed us the dim, smoking mass of Vries Island already a full two leagues astern, while ahead, across eighteen miles or more of racing foam-crested billows, loomed the mountainous coast of Awa. We made our way along the pitching deck to where the skipper stood with a group of sailors beside the gig. They were lashing down a number of empty water breakers in the bow and stern and under the thwarts, and there was an oil cask made fast to the bow with a five-fathom line.
“Ready, hey?” shouted the skipper, when I made our presence known by touching his arm. “Well, it’s on your own head, sir. I’m doing my best for you, as I’m a God-fearing Christian. But it’ll take a sight of special providence to bear you safe into haven once you cut adrift.”
I pointed to the oil cask. “A drag?”
“Aye. Keep you from broaching. Best kind of drag. She’s three-quarters full of oil, and the head riddled with gimlet holes. The oil will spread and keep the waves from breaking over you.”