THE SHOGUN’S DAUGHTER

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

A Volunteer with Pike: The True Narrative of One Dr. John Robinson and his Love for the Fair Señorita Vallois. Illustrated in color by Charlotte Weber-Ditzler.

Crown 8vo $1.50

Into the Primitive. Illustrated in color by Allen T. True.

Third edition. Crown 8vo $150

A. C. McCLURG & CO.
CHICAGO

The Princess Azai

THE SHOGUN’S
DAUGHTER

BY
ROBERT AMES BENNET
Author of “For the White Christ,”
“Into the Primitive,” etc.

WITH 5 PICTURES IN COLOR
BY W. D. GOLDBECK

CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1910

Copyright
A. C. McClurg & Co.
1910

Published October 1, 1910
Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London, England

THE·PLIMPTON·PRESS
[W·D·O]
NORWOOD·MASS·U·S·A

To
MY WIFE

[CONTENTS]

[ILLUSTRATIONS]

THE SHOGUN’S
DAUGHTER

CHAPTER I—Eastern Seas

My first cruise as a midshipman in the navy of the United States began a short month too late for me to share in the honors of the Mexican War. In other words, I came in at the foot of the service, with all the grades above me fresh-stocked with comparatively young and vigorous officers. As a consequence, the rate of promotion was so slow that the Summer of 1851 found me, at the age of twenty-four, still a middie, with my lieutenancy ever receding, like a will-o’-the-wisp, into the future.

Had I chosen a naval career through necessity, I might have continued to endure. But to the equal though younger heir of one of the largest plantations in South Carolina, the pay of even a post captain would have been of small concern. It is, therefore, hardly necessary to add that I had been lured into the service by the hope of winning fame and glory.

That my choice should have fallen upon the navy rather than the army may have been due to the impulse of heredity. According to family traditions and records, one of my ancestors was the famous English seaman Will Adams, who served Queen Elizabeth in the glorious fight against the Spanish Armada and afterwards piloted a Dutch ship through the dangerous Straits of Magellan and across the vast unchartered expanse of the Pacific to the mysterious island empire, then known as Cipango or Zipangu.

History itself verifies that wonderful voyage and the still more wonderful fact of my ancestor’s life among the Japanese as one of the nobles and chief counsellors of the great Emperor Iyeyasu. So highly was the advice of the bold Englishman esteemed by the Emperor that he was never permitted to return home. For many years he dwelt honorably among that most peculiar of Oriental peoples, aiding freely the few English and Dutch who ventured into the remote Eastern seas. He had aided even the fanatical Portuguese and Spaniards, who, upon his arrival, had sought to have him and his handful of sick and starving shipmates executed as pirates. So it was he lived and died a Japanese noble, and was buried with all honor.

With the blood of such a man in my veins, it is not strange that I turned to the sea. Yet it is no less strange that three years in the service should bring me to an utter weariness of the dull naval routine. Notable as were the achievements of our navy throughout the world in respect to exploration and other peaceful triumphs, it has ever surprised me that in the absence of war and promotion I should have lingered so long in my inferior position.

In war the humiliation of servitude to seniority may be thrust from thought by the hope of winning superior rank through merit. Deprived of this opportunity, I could not but chafe under my galling subjection to the commands of men never more than my equals in social rank and far too often my inferiors.

The climax came after a year on the China Station, to which I had obtained an assignment in the hope of renewed action against the arrogant Celestials. Disappointed in this, and depressed by a severe spell of fever contracted at Honkong, I resigned the service at Shanghai, and took passage for New York, by way of San Francisco and the Horn, on the American clipper Sea Flight.

We cleared for the Sandwich Islands August the twenty-first, 1851. The second noon found us safe across the treacherous bars of the Yangtse-Kiang and headed out across the Eastern Sea, the southwest monsoon bowling us along at a round twelve knots.

The double lassitude of my convalescence and the season had rendered me too indifferent to inquire about my fellow-passengers. We were well under way before I learned that, aside from the officers and crew, I was the only person aboard ship. In view of the voyage of from five to six months’ duration which lay before me, this discovery roused me to the point of observing the characters of the skipper and his mates. Much to my chagrin, I found that all were Yankees of the most pronounced nasal type.

As a late naval officer no less than as a Southern gentleman, I could not humble myself to social intercourse with the bucko mates. Fortunately Captain Downing was somewhat less unbearable, and had the good taste to share my interest in the mysterious islands of Japan, as well as my detestation of China. Even as the low, dreary coast of Kiangsu faded from view in our wake, we attained to a cordial exchange of congratulations over the fact that we were at last quit of the filth and fantasies of the Celestial Empire.

As we wheeled about from the last glance astern, Downing pointed over the side with a jerk of his thumb. “Look at that dirty flood, Mr. Adams. Just like a China river to try to turn the whole sea China yellow! Conceited as John Chinaman himself!”

“Give the devil his due,” I drawled. “Biggest nation on earth, and close upon the biggest river.”

“Aye, and thank Providence, every last one of their three hundred million pigtails lie abaft my taffrail, and every drop of that foul flood soon to lose itself in clean blue water!” He stared ahead, combing his fingers through his bushy whiskers, his shrewd eyes twinkling with satisfaction. “Aye! blue water—the whole breadth of the Pacific before us, and Asia astern.”

“Not all Asia,” I corrected. “We have yet to clear the Loo Choos.”

“The Loo Choos,” he repeated. “Queer people, I guess. They are said to be a kind of Chinamen.”

“It’s hard to tell,” I replied. “They may be Chinese. Yet some say the islands are subject to Japan.”

“To Japan? Then they’ve got good reason to be queer!” He paced across the deck and back, his jaw set and eyes keen with sudden resolve. “By ginger, I’ll do it this passage, sir, danged if I won’t! I’ve been wanting to see something of the Japanese islands ever since I came out to the China seas as a cabin-boy, and that’s fifty years gone.”

“You’d run out of your course for a glimpse of the Japanese coast?” I exclaimed, no less incredulous than delighted.

“More than a glimpse, Mr. Adams. Van Diemen Strait is a shorter course than the Loo Choo passage, and with this weather—”

“Midst of the typhoon season,” I cut in with purposeful superciliousness of tone.

The captain of a clipper is as sensitive to any aspersions on his seamanship as the grayest master of navigation in the navy. Downing bit snappily. “Typhoon be damned! I navigated a whaler through uncharted seas twenty odd years, and never lost my ship. I’ll take the Sea Flight through Van Diemen Strait, blow or calm, sir.”

“No doubt,” I murmured with ambiguous suavity.

He scowled, puzzled at my smile. “You naval officers! Commanded my first ship before you were born—before I had need of a razor. What’s more, I’m third owner in this clipper, and I’ve discretion over my course. The skipper who carries the first cargo out of a Japanese port is going to get the cream, and I’ve an idee the Japs are loosening up a bit. I’m going to put into Kagoshima Bay, where the old Morrison tried to land the castaway Japs in ’thirty-seven.”

“She was fired upon most savagely by the soldiers of the Prince of Satsuma,” I replied. “Why not try Nagasaki?”

“Nagasaki?—Deshima!” he rumbled. “I’m no Dutchman or yellow Chinee, to be treated like a dog. What’s more, it’s too far up the west coast. No! I’ll chance Kagoshima. That Satsuma king or mandarin, whatever he is, may have changed his mind since the Morrison, or there may be a new one now, with more liberal idees.”

“Since you’re resolved upon it, skipper, I must confess I have reasons of my own to be pleased with your plan,” I said, and at his interested glance, I told him somewhat in detail of my daring ancestor Will Adams, the first Englishman ever to reach the Land of the Rising Sun and the only European ever made a Japanese noble.

“H’m. Married a Japanese wife, and left children by her,” commented Downing, and he grinned broadly. “I must ask leave for you to land and look up your heathen kin.”

“You forget yourself, sir,” I caught him up. “Be kind enough hereafter to refrain from impertinence when speaking of persons related to me.”

He stared in astonishment. “Well, I’ll be durned! Two hundred years and more since your forefather died, you said—”

“None the less,” I insisted sharply, “my cousins are my cousins, sir. If there are any of my ancestor’s Japanese descendants now living, they are related to me, however remote may be the degree. Therefore they are entitled to be spoken of with respect.”

“Well, I’ll swan!” he muttered. “No offence, Mr. Adams.”

I bowed my acceptance of his uncouth apology, but maintained my dignity. “As I have said, sir, my ancestor was ennobled by the great Emperor Iyeyasu. Heathen or not, rest assured that his Japanese descendants, if any survive, are at the least gentlefolk.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” he grunted. “You’ll soon have a chance to inquire. I’m going to take my ship up Kagoshima Bay, fog, shine, or blow.”

He turned on his heel, and ordered the helmsman to put the ship’s head due east. I went below in a glow of pleasant anticipation. There was no mistaking the look in Downing’s face. Nothing could now shake his stubborn resolve. I was to see the mysterious Cipango of Marco Polo and Mendez Pinto, the Iappan of my ancestor,—the land that for almost two and a half centuries had shut itself in from all communication with the wide world other than through the severely restricted trade with the Dutch and Chinese at Nagasaki.

CHAPTER II—In Kagoshima Bay

Dawn of the third day found us ten miles off the north shore of the small volcanic island that stands second in the entrance to Van Diemen Strait. The lurid glare reflected from its crater into the ascending clouds of smoke had served as a beacon during the last hours of darkness. Daylight confirmed the calculations of our position by the sight of the beautiful smoking cone of Horner’s Peak, lying twenty-five or thirty miles to the northeast on the southern extremity of Satsuma, and the rugged peninsula of Osumi, ending in the sharp point of Cape Satanomi, a like distance to the eastward.

The moment our landfall was clear in the growing light, the Sea Flight came around and headed straight between the two peninsulas. A run of three hours before the monsoon, over the bluest of white-capped seas, brought us well up into the entrance of Kagoshima Bay, with Horner’s Peak a few miles off on the port beam, and the bold, verdant hills of Osumi to starboard. Close along each shore the sea broke on half-submerged rocks, but the broad channel showed no signs of reefs or shoals, and Downing stood boldly in, without shortening sail.

Having none of the responsibility of navigating the ship, I was able to loll upon the rail and enjoy to the utmost the magnificent scenery of the bay. On either shore the mountainous coast trended off to the northward, an emerald setting to the sapphire bay, with the lofty broken peak of a smoking volcano towering precipitously at the head of the thirty-mile stretch of land-girded waters. Far inland still loftier peaks cast dim outlines through the summery haze.

Every valley and sheltered mountain-side along the bay showed heavy growths of pines and other trees, among which were scattered groups of straw-thatched, high-peaked cottages. Many of the slopes were under cultivation and terraced far up towards the crests, while every cove was fringed with the straggling hovels of a fishing village.

In every direction the bay was dotted with the square white sails of fishing smacks and small junks,—vessels that differed from Chinese craft in the absence of bamboo ribs to the sails and still more in the presence of the yawning port which gaped in their sterns. I concluded that this extraordinary build was due to the Japanese policy of keeping the population at home, for certainly none but a madman could have dreamed of undertaking any other than a coastwise cruise in one of these unseaworthy vessels. Another peculiarity was that not one of the craft showed a trace of paint.

The majestic apparition of the Sea Flight in their secluded haven seemed to fill the Japanese sailors with wildest panic. One and all, their craft scattered before her like flocks of startled waterfowl, for the most part running inshore for shelter at the nearest villages or behind the verdant islets that rose here and there above the rippling blue waters. A few stood up the bay, probably to spread the alarm, but the clipper easily overhauled and passed the swiftest.

By noon, though the wind had fallen to a light breeze, we had sailed some thirty miles up the bay and were within three miles of the volcano, which stood out, apparently on an island, with a deep inlet running in on either side. On the Satsuma shore, across the mouth of the western inlet, our glasses had long since brought to view the gray expanse of Kagoshima, rising to a walled hill crowned with large buildings, whose quaint, curved roofs and many-storied pagoda towers recalled China.

All along the bay shores, great bells were booming the alarm, and crowds of people rushed about the villages in wild disorder, while the junks and smacks continued to fly before us as if we were pirates. Smiling grimly at the commotion raised by his daring venture, Downing shortened sail and stood into the opening of the western inlet until we could make out clearly with the naked eye the general features of the city and its citadel.

So far the lead had given us from forty to eighty fathoms. When we found thirty fathoms with good holding ground, Downing decided that caution was the better part of curiosity, and gave orders to let go anchor. Hardly had we swung about to our cable when a large half-decked clipper-built boat bore down upon us from the city with the boldness of a hawk swooping upon a swan. The little craft was driven by the long sculls of a number of naked brown oarsmen in the stern. Amidships and forward swarmed twenty or thirty soldiers, clad in fantastic armor of brass and lacquered leather, and bearing antique muskets and matchlocks.

In the stern of the guard-boat fluttered a small flag with the design of a circled white cross, while from the staff on the prow a great tassel of silky filaments trailed down almost to the surface of the water. Beneath the tassel stood two men with robes of gray silk and mushroom-shaped hats tied to their chins with bows of ribbon. I should have taken them for priests had not each carried a brace of swords thrust horizontally through his sash-like belt.

At a sign from the older of these officers, the boat drove in alongside the starboard quarter. As Downing and I stepped to the rail and gazed down upon them, the younger officer flung aboard a bamboo stick that had been cleft at one end to hold a piece of folded paper. Downing spun about to pick up the message. But I, calling to mind the reputed courtesy of the Japanese, was seized with a whim to test their reputation in this respect, and bowed profoundly to the officers, addressing them with Oriental gravity: “Gentlemen, permit me to request you to come aboard and favor me with your company at dinner.”

Together the two swordsmen returned my bow, slipping their hands down their thighs to their knees and bending until their backs were horizontal. After a marked pause they straightened, their olive faces aglow with polite smiles, and the younger man astonished me by replying in distinct though oddly accented English: “Honorable sir, thangs, no. To-morrow, yes. You wait to-morrow?”

Before I could answer, his companion muttered what seemed to be a grave remonstrance. He was replying in tones as liquid and musical as Italian when Downing swung back beside me.

“Look here, Mr. Adams,” he grumbled, thrusting out a sheet of crinkly yellow paper. “Just like their heathen impudence!”

I hastened to read the message, which was written, in the Chinese manner, with an ink-brush instead of a quill, but the words were in English, as legible and brief as they were to the point:

“You bring our people shipwrecked? Yes? Take them Nagasaki. You come trade? Yes? Go. Cannon fire.”

Downing scowled upon the bizarre soldiers and their commanders with contemptuous disapproval, and pointing to the message, bawled roughly: “Ahoy, there, you yellow heathen, this ain’t any way to treat a peaceful merchantman. Must take us for pirates.”

The younger officer looked up, with his polite smile, and asked in a placid tone: “You come why?”

“Trade, of course. What else d’ you reckon?”

“Trade? You go Nagasaki. Thangs.”

“Nagasaki!” growled Downing. “Take me for a Dutchman? You put back, fast as you can paddle, and tell your mandarin, or whatever he calls himself, that here’s an American clipper lying in his harbor, ready to buy or barter for tea, chinaware, or silks.”

“Thangs. You go Nagasaki—you go Nagasaki,” reiterated the officer, smiling more politely than ever, and signing us down the bay with a graceful wave of his small fan. “No get things aboard. You go Nagasaki. Ships no can load.”

“That’s easy cured,” replied Downing. “Tell your mandarin I’ll get under way first thing to-morrow and run in close as our draught will let us. If we can’t come ’longside his bund, we can lighter cargo in sampans.”

The officers exchanged quick glances, and the younger one repeated his affable order with unshaken placidity: “You go Nagasaki. Thangs.”

Without waiting for further words, both bowed, and the older one signed to the scullers with his fan. The men thrust off and brought their graceful craft about with admirable dexterity. Again their officers bent low in response to my parting bow, and the long sculls sent the boat skimming cityward, across the sparkling water, at racing speed.

Downing nodded after them and permitted his hard mouth to relax in a half grin. “That’s the way to talk to heathen, Mr. Adams. No begging favors; just straight-for’a’d offer to trade. You’ll see to-morrow, sir.”

At this moment the impatient steward announced dinner, and we hastened below with appetites sharpened by pleasant anticipations. The more we discussed the courteous speech and manners of our visitors the more we became convinced that they had meant nothing by their notice to leave, but would soon return with a cordial assent to our proposals.

To our surprise, the afternoon wore away without a second visit either from the guard-boat or any other craft. Junk after junk and scores of fishing smacks sailed past us cityward, but all alike held off beyond hail. Still more noteworthy was the fact that no vessel came out of the inlet or across from the city.

At last, shortly before sunset, we sighted four guard-boats, armed with swivels, bearing down upon us from the nearest point of the city. Our first thought was that we were to be attacked as wantonly as had been the Morrison and other ships that had sought to open communication with the Japanese. But at half a cable’s length they veered to starboard and began to circle around the Sea Flight in line ahead, forming a cordon. It was not difficult to divine that their purpose was to prevent us from making any attempt at landing.

That they intended to maintain their patrol throughout the night became evident to me when, after lingering over two bottles of my choice Madeira with the skipper, I withdrew from the supper-table to my stateroom. The cabin air being close and sweltering and my blood somewhat heated from the wine, I turned down my reading lamp and leaned out one of my stern windows. Refreshed by the cool puffs of the night breeze that came eddying around the ship’s quarters as she rocked gently on a slight swell, I soon began to heed my surroundings with all the alertness of a sailor in a hostile port.

The night was moonless and partly overcast, but the pitch darkness served only to make clearer the beacon fires which blazed along the coast so far as my circle of vision extended. No beacons had been fired immediately about Kagoshima, but the city was aglow with a soft illumination of sufficient radiance to bring out the black outlines of the guard-boats whenever they passed between me and the shore in their slow circling of the ship. The booming of the bells, however, had ceased, and the only sounds that broke the hot, damp stillness of the night were the lapping of ripples alongside and the low creaking of the ship’s rigging.

An hour passed and I still lolled half out of my window, puffing a Manila cheroot, when I heard a slight splash directly below me. It was a sound such as might be made by a leaping fish, but in Eastern waters life often depends on instant vigilance against treachery. I drew back on the second to grasp a revolver and extinguish the lamp. Within half a minute I was back again at my window, peering warily down into the blackness under the ship’s stern. There seemed to be a blot on the phosphorescent water.

“Whoever you are,” I said in a low tone, “sheer off until daylight, or I will fire.”

The response was an unmistakable sigh of relief, followed by an eager whisper: “Tojin sama—honorable foreigner, only one man come.”

Almost at the first word I knew that my visitor was the younger officer of the guard-boat.

“You come alone?” I demanded. “What for?”

“Make still, honorable foreigner!” he cautioned. “Ometsuke hear.”

“Ometsuke?”

“Watchers—spies.”

“You’ve slipped through the guard-boats on a secret visit!” I whispered, curiosity fast overcoming my caution. “Why do you come?”

“To go in ship, honorable sir,—England, ’Merica, five continents go—no stop. In boat to pay, gold is.”

For a moment astonishment held me mute. Who had ever before heard of a Japanese voluntarily leaving his own shores? Many as had been picked up by whalers and clippers in the neighboring seas, I knew of no instance where the rescued men had not been either wrecked or blown too far out to sea to be able to navigate their miserable junks into a home port. The thought flashed upon me that the man might be a criminal. Only the strongest of motives could have impelled him to seek to break the inflexible law of his country against foreign travel. But the memory of his smiling, high-bred face was against the supposition of guilt.

He broke in upon my hesitancy with an irresistible appeal: “Tojin sama, you no take me? One year I wait to board a black ship and go the five continents.”

“Stand by,” I answered. “I’ll drop you a line. But bear in mind, no treachery, or I’ll blow you to kingdom come!”

“Honorable sir!” he murmured, in a tone of such surprise and reproach as to sweep away my last doubt.

Having no line handy, I whipped the bedclothes from my berth and knotted the silken coverlet to one of the stout linen sheets. The latter I made fast to a handle of my sea-chest, and lowered the coverlet through the cabin window, exposing outboard as little as possible of the white sheet.

“Stand by,” I whispered downward. “Here’s your line.”

In a moment I felt a gentle tugging at the end of the line, followed by a soft murmur: “Honorable sir, pleased to haul.”

Though puzzled, I hauled in on the line, to which something of light weight had been made fast. The mystery was soon solved. The end of the line brought into my grasp two longish objects. A touch told me they were sheathed swords. My visitor had proved his faith by first sending up his weapons.

I cleared the line and dropped it down again, with a cordial word of invitation: “Come aboard! Can you climb?”

“I climb, tojin sama,” he whispered back.

There was a short pause, and then the line taughtened. He came up with seamanlike quickness and agility. His form appeared dimly below me as he swung up, hand over hand. I reached out and helped him draw himself in through the window. Pushing him aside, I sought to jerk in my line. It taughtened with a heavy tug.

“What’s this?” I exclaimed. “You made fast to your boat. It should have been cast adrift.”

“Boat loose is,” he replied, with unfailing suavity.

“The line is fast,” I retorted.

I felt his hands on the sheet, and he leaned past me out of the window.

“Your dunnage, of course!” I muttered, and, regretful of my impatience, I fell to hauling with him.

One good heave cleared our load from the boat, which was left free to drift up the harbor with wind and tide. The thought that it might be sighted and overhauled by the guard-boat patrol quickened my pull at the line. A few more heaves brought up to the window a cylindrical bundle or bale, which the Japanese grasped and drew inboard before I could lend a hand.

My visitor was aboard, dunnage and all, and, so far as I could tell, he had not been detected either by the men of the guard-boats or the watch above us on the poop.

CHAPTER III—The Gentleman with Two Swords

For a full half-minute I leaned out, listening intently. No alarm broke the peaceful stillness of the night. I closed the window and drew the curtains. Having carefully covered the panes, I struck a lucifer match and crossed over to light my large swinging lamp. Three more steps brought me to the stateroom door, which I locked and bolted. Turning about as the lamp flamed up to full brightness, I saw my guest standing well to one side of the window, his narrow oblique eyes glancing about the room with intense yet well-bred curiosity.

His dress was far different from what it had been aboard the guard-boat. In place of the baggy trousers and flowing robes of silk, his body was now scantily covered with a smock-like garment of coarse blue cotton, and his legs were wound about with black leggings of still coarser stuff. On his feet were straw sandals, secured only with a leather thong that passed between the great and second toes. His bare head gave me my first chance to view at close quarters the curious fashion in which, after the manner of his country, his hair was shaved off from brow to nape, and the side locks twisted together and laid forward on the crown in a small gun hammer cue.

All this I took in at a glance as I turned back towards him. Meeting my gaze, he beamed upon me with a grateful smile and bowed far over, sliding his hands down his thighs to his knees in the peculiar manner I had observed when he was aboard the guard-boat.

Not to be outdone in politeness, I bowed in response. “Welcome aboard the Sea Flight, sir. Pray be seated.”

At the word, he dropped to what seemed to be a most uncomfortable posture on his knees and heels.

“Not that,” I protested, and I pointed to a cushioned locker. “Have a seat.”

He shook his head smilingly, and replied in an odd Dutch dialect, as inverted as his English but far more fluent, that he was quite comfortable.

“Very well,” I said in the same language. “Let us become acquainted. I am Worth Adams of South Carolina, lately resigned from the navy of the United States.”

“’Merica?” he questioned.

I bowed, and catching up from under the window his curved long sword and straight short sword, or dirk, I presented them to him by the sheaths. He waved them aside, bowing and smiling in evident gratification at my offer. I insisted. He clasped his hands before him, palm to palm, in a gesture of polite protest. I drew back and hung the weapons on the wall rack that held my service sword. He flung himself across, beside his bale of dunnage, and plucked at the lashings.

As I turned to him he unrolled the oiled paper in which the bundles were wrapped. The contents opened out in a veritable curio shop of Oriental articles. There were three or four pairs of straw sandals, two pairs of lacquered clogs, a folding fan, a bundle of cream-colored, crinkly paper, a tiny silver-bowled pipe, two or three small red-lacquered cases, a black mushroom hat of lacquered paper, and a number of robes, toed socks and other garments, all of silk and some exquisitely embroidered in gold thread and colors.

From the midst of one of the silken heaps he uncovered a sword whose silk-corded hilt and shark-skin scabbard were alike decorated with gold dragons. Straightening on his knees, he held the weapon out to me, his face beaming with grateful friendship. “Wo—Wort—Woroto Sama, honorable gift take.”

“Gift!” I exclaimed. “I cannot accept so splendid a gift from you.”

“Exkoos!” he murmured in an apologetic tone, and holding the sword with the edge towards himself and the hilt to his left, he slowly drew it out until two or three inches of the mirror-like blade showed between the twisted dragon of the guard and the lip of the scabbard. Pointing first to the shark-tooth mark running down the length of the blade and then to a Chinese letter near the guard, he explained persuasively, “Good, Masamune him make.”

“The more reason why I should refuse such a gift,” I insisted.

He rose to his feet and bowed with utmost dignity. “You him take. Low down Yoritomo me, honorable son high honorable Owari dono, same Shogun brother.”

“What! Your father a brother of the Shogun—of your Emperor?”

He stood a moment pondering. “Shogun cousin,” he replied.

“You mean, your father and the Shogun are cousins?”

He nodded, and again held out the sword. “You him take.”

“With pleasure!” I responded, and I accepted the gift as freely as it was offered. A cousin of the Emperor of Japan should be well able to afford even such extravagant gifts as this beautiful weapon.

“My thanks!” I cried, and I half turned to bare the sword in the full light of the lamp. Though of a shape entirely novel to me, the thick narrow blade balanced perfectly in my grasp. Being neither tall nor robust, I found it rather heavy, and the length of the hilt convinced me that it was intended to be used as a two-handed sword by the slightly built Japanese. I presented it, hilt foremost, to Yoritomo. “Pray show me, sir, how you hold it.”

He stared at me in a bewildered manner. I repeated my request, and thrust the hilt into his hand. After a moment’s hesitancy, which I mistook for confusion, he reached for the scabbard as well, sheathed the sword, and thrust it into his narrow cotton sash. When he turned to kneel beside his dunnage, I flushed with anger at what I took to be a deliberate refusal of my request.

He rose with a wooden chopstick in his hand. Politely waving me to one side, he stepped out into the clear centre of the stateroom and bent to set the chopstick upright on the floor. Even had the ship been motionless, I doubt if he could have made the little six-inch piece of wood stand on end for more than a fraction of a second. Yet, having placed it in position, he suddenly freed it and sprang back to strike a two-handed blow with the sword, direct from the sheath, with amazing swiftness. The chopstick, caught by the razor-edged blade before it could topple over, was clipped in two across the middle. In a twinkling the blade was back in its sheath.

“Mon Dieu!” I gasped. “That is swordsmanship!”

I held out my hand to him impulsively. He bowed and placed the sword on my palm. The splendid fellow did not know the meaning of a handshake. Much to his astonishment I caught his hand and gave it a cordial grip. I addressed him in my best Dutch, inverting it as best I could to resemble his own dialect: “My dear sir! You wish to see the world? You shall travel as my guest.”

He caught up one of his lacquer cases and opened it to my view. Within it lay a few dozen oval gold coins, hardly more than enough to have paid his passage to New York. There could be no doubt that he had vastly underestimated the purchasing value of his coins in foreign lands. He explained in his quaint Dutch: “The punishment for exchanging money with foreigners is death. So also it is death to leave Dai Nippon. I can die but once.”

“They will never kill a cousin of their Emperor!”

He smiled. “Death will be welcome if I can first bring to my country a better knowledge of the tojin peoples and their ways.”

Even an Adams of South Carolina might well be proud to act as cicerone to an Oriental prince. Yet I believe I was actuated more by the subtle sympathy and instinctive understanding that was already drawing me to him, despite the barriers of alien blood and thought and language which lay between us.

“Put up your gold,” I said. “You will have no need for it. I am wealthy and free from all ties. You shall travel with me and see the world as my guest.”

He caught my meaning with the intuition of a thorough gentleman, and his black eyes flashed me a glance of perfect comprehension. He laid down the box of coins and took up one of the silken garments, with an apologetic gesture at the coarse dress he was wearing. I shook my head.

“No,” I said. “There’s been no outcry from the guard-boats, so I’m sure I can stow you away until we are clear of your country. But it will be best to disguise you, to guard against any chance glimpse. What’s more, the sooner you don Occidental clothes the better, if you wish to avoid annoyance from the rudeness of our shipmates. You’re perhaps an inch the shorter; otherwise we are about of a build, and I’ve a well-stocked wardrobe.”

While speaking I proceeded to haul out three or four suits from my lockers, and signed him to take his pick. The gesture was more intelligible to him than my words. He bowed, smiled, and chose the least foppish of the suits. I laid out my lightest slippers, a tasselled smoking-cap, linen, et cetera, and drew his attention to the conveniences of a well-furnished washstand.

He took up and smelled the small cake of perfumed soap and was about to try his flashing teeth upon it, when I showed him its use by washing my hands. At this his smile brightened into delight, and, casting loose his girdle, he dropped his short robe from him as one would fling off a cloak. The leggings and sandals followed the robe, and he stood before me nude yet unabashed, his lithe figure like a statue of gold bronze.

Fortunately I was too well acquainted with the peculiar variations of etiquette and manners exhibited by the different peoples of the East and West to betray my astonishment at this exposure. I poured him the bath for which he seemed so eager, and politely excused myself with the explanation that I must provide him with refreshments.

As I had my own private larder in the second stateroom, I had no need to call upon the steward for a luncheon, having on hand various sweets, potted meats, English biscuits, and Chinese conserves, in addition to my wines. When I returned with a well-stocked tray, I found my guest struggling to don his linen over his coat. His relief was unmistakable when I signed him to lay aside everything and slip on a loose lounging-robe.

Following my example, he seated himself at the little folding table. When served, he waited, seemingly reluctant to eat alone. Accordingly I served myself, and fell to without delay. At my first mouthful he also caught up knife and fork and began to eat with undisguised heartiness yet with a nicety and correctness of manners that astonished me. When I expressed my surprise that our table etiquette should be so similar, he explained with charming candor that he was but copying my actions.

I could not repress my admiration. “Here’s to our friendship!” I said, raising my glass to him. “May it soon ripen to the mellowness of this wine.”

I doubt if he sensed the meaning of the words, but he raised his glass, and his face glowed with responsive pleasure as together we drank the toast. The act of good-fellowship seemed to bring him still nearer to me, and as I gazed across into his glowing face I could almost forget our differences of race. In my robe and smoking-cap his color and the obliqueness of his eyes appeared less pronounced, and I realized that in all other respects his features differed little from my own. True, my eyes were dark blue and his jet black, and though my nose was rather low between the eyes, his was still flatter. But below their bridges our noses rose in the same softly aristocratic curve. The outlines of our faces were of a like oval contour, there was a close similarity about our mouths and chins, and even our eyebrows curved with an identical high and even arch.

“My friend,” I said, “do not answer unless you feel free to explain,—but I wonder that you, a relative of the Emperor, should be compelled to start your travels in this secret manner.”

“Shogun, not Emperor,” he corrected. “Law over Shogun, too. I travel naibun—incognito. Shimadzu Satsuma-no-kami my friend. I teach Raugaku—the Dutch learning,—war ways, history, engineering. No man know real me at Kagoshima. Daimio of Satsuma gone Yedo. I steal aboard. No man know. Shogunate no punish daimio, my friend.”

“They would punish even the Prince of Satsuma if they found you had escaped from his province?”

My guest nodded. “Very old law.”

“Yet you would leave the country at the risk of death?”

His smile deepened into a look of solemn joy. I give his broken Dutch a fair translation.

“My soul is in the eyes of Woroto Sama. There is trust between us. I speak without concealment. The tojin peoples of the west have dealt harshly with the Chinese. The black ships have destroyed many forts and bombarded great cities. I fear the black ships may come to devastate Dai Nippon; yet my people know even less of your people than did the Chinese. The Dutch of Deshima warn us to heed the demands of the tojin to open our ports. The officials in control of the Shogunate shut their ears.”

My lip curled. “The English are a nation of shopkeepers, and our Yankees are no less keen for bargains. They will never rest until they have found a market for their wares in every country on earth. If they cannot get into your ports peacefully, sooner or later they will break in by force.”

“Such, then, is the truth,” he murmured. “Namu Amida Butsu! I ask only that I may live to bring back to Dai Nippon a clear report of the power and ways of the tojin peoples.”

“Nothing could please them more,” I replied. “Count on me to help you fulfil your noble mission!”

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.

Meantime the Sea Flight, having tacked clear of the mouth of the bay, raced down to Cape Satanomi with the full sweep of the monsoon abeam. No less to my gratification than my surprise, Yoritomo proved to be a good sailor, and watched our swift flight along the coast with wondering delight. The heavy rolling of the ship in the trough of the sea affected him no more than myself.

Before long we cleared the outjutting point of Cape Satanomi and, veering to port until upon an easy bowline, drove due east into the vast expanse of the Pacific. I pointed to the craggy tip of the cape where the breakers foamed high on the dark rocks, and rose, with a wave of my hand. “Farewell to Dai Nippon! Come—Downing will be tumbling below for dinner, now that we are clear of land—come and meet the hairy tojin.”

Yoritomo bowed and, with a last glance at the fast-receding cape, followed me out into the passage. We found Downing already at his pork and beans. But he paused, with knife in air, to stare at my companion, gaping as widely as did the steward.

“Good-day, skipper,” I said. “Allow me to introduce to you my Japanese cousin Lord Yoritomo.”

“Cousin?—lord?” he spluttered. “Danged if he’s not the first danged stowaway I ever—”

“You mistake,” I corrected, “I invited the gentleman aboard as my guest for the passage. He will share my staterooms, and you are to look to me for his passage money.”

“Well, that’s a different matter, Mr. Adams,” grunted Downing. “If you’re fool enough to—”

“Mason,” I called sharply to the steward, “lay a plate for His Lordship.”

CHAPTER IV—Yoritomo’s Betrothed

As this is not an account of the travels incognito of my friend Yoritomo, I do not propose to give even a résumé of our trip to America and our European experiences. Nor shall I give the particulars of the family dissension that estranged me from home and, to a degree, from my country.

Enough to say that, despite our incongruous and mutually incomprehensible mental worlds, the Autumn of 1852 found me bound to my Japanese protégé and friend by indissoluble ties of sympathy and love. Strange and inverted as seemed many of his ideas to our western ways of thinking, he had proved himself worthy of the warmest friendship and esteem.

Considering this, together with my longing for adventure, and my freedom from all the ties of family, acquaintance, and habit that bind a man to his country, it will not be thought extraordinary that I at last determined to accompany my friend on his return to Japan. My decision was made at the time when he was spurred to redoubled effort in his studies of the Occident by the news that the proposed American expedition to his country was at last approaching a consummation under the vigorous superintendence of Commodore Perry.

It was then my friend told me, with his ever-ready smile, that, should the law be rigidly enforced against him upon his return, he would be bound to a cross and transfixed with spears. Yet under the menace of so atrocious a martyrdom, he labored night and day to complete his studies, that he might return to his people and guide them from disaster upon the coming of the hairy tojin—the Western barbarians.

Few could have resisted the inspiration of so lofty a spirit, the contagion of such utter devotion and self-sacrifice. When my friend was willing to give all for his country, should not I be willing to do a little for the constellation whose brightest star was my own sovereign State, the great Commonwealth of South Carolina?

After all, though President Fillmore and Commodore Perry were Yankees, the flag was the flag of the South no less than of the North, and I had served under it. The purpose of the expedition was peaceful. There flashed upon me a plan by which I might further the success of the expedition and at the same time aid my friend in his purpose.

“Tomo!” I cried, “you insist that you must sail before the American expedition,—that you must risk all to reach Yedo and advise your government to welcome the fleet of my countrymen. Very well! I will no longer seek to dissuade you. I will go with you and help you persuade Dai Nippon to enter into friendly relations with America.”

He stared at me, startled and distressed. “Impossible, Worth! They might regard you as a spy. You would be risking death!”

“In all the world I have one friend, and only one,” I rejoined. “The thought of parting from him has been for months a constant source of anxiety and pain. It is pleasant to be rid of such distress. I am going with you to Yedo.”

His eyes widened almost to Occidental roundness, the pupils purpling with the intensity of his emotion. “My thanks, brother! But it is impossible—impossible!”

“At the worst they can only send me packing in a bamboo cage, to be shipped out of Nagasaki by the Dutch.”

“That is the usual course with wrecked sailors, but should you go with me, they might torture and execute you as a spy.”

“Not with Perry’s fleet in Eastern waters,” I replied. “I give your government credit for at least a modicum of statesmanship. Yet even supposing they lack all wisdom, I choose to take the risk. There is no room for argument. You are going, so am I. Why, sir, it’s an adventure such as I have been longing for all my life! You cannot turn me from it.”

“If not I, others can and will. The ometsukes are everywhere. You could not so much as effect a landing.”

“And you?” I demanded.

“I am Japanese. There is a chance for me to slip through. But you—”

“Disguised in Japanese dress! Can I not talk good Japanese? Have I not accustomed myself to your costume? A little more practice with the chopsticks and clogs—”

“Your eyes! In all Japan there is to be found no one with round eyes of violet blue.”

“I can learn to squint; and have you not told me of the deep-brimmed hats worn by your freelances, the ronins? You have said that many high-born Japanese have faces no darker than my own, and that brown hair is not unknown.”

“You will risk your life to come with me!” he protested.

I laughed lightly. “You have so little to say of your Japanese ladies, Tomo. Perhaps I wish to see what they are like.”

“That is a jest. I have told you that our women of noble families are seldom to be seen by strangers.”

“There are those others,” I suggested.

He gazed at me in mild reproach. “Do not jest, Woroto. I have seen that you have nothing to do with the joro of the Occident. You are not one to dally with those of the Orient.”

“But the geishas—the artists—they must be charming.”

“It is their art to charm.”

“Tomo,” I said, sobering myself, “I know it is a rudeness to ask, but, pardon me, are you married?”

“No.”

“Is there no maiden of noble family—?”

“None,” he answered. “There was once a geisha—But we men of samurai blood are supposed to despise such weakness. Since then I have devoted my life to that which you so generously have helped me to attain.”

“You have no desire ever to marry?” I persisted.

“We hold it a duty to ancestors and families for every young man and maiden to marry,” he replied. “It is not as we wish, but as our parents choose. More than ten years ago His Highness the Shogun arranged with my father that I should marry his daughter Azai.”

“You refused! But of course you were still a boy.”

“You mistake. The arrangement was for the future. The maiden was then only six years of age.”

“Six? and ten years ago? Then she is now sixteen,—a princess of sixteen! Tomo, you’re as cold-blooded as a fish! A princess of sixteen, and you never before so much as hinted at your good fortune! Of course she is beautiful?”

He gazed at me in patient bewilderment over the inexplicable romantic emotionalism of the tojin.

“She is said to be beautiful,” he replied, calmly indifferent. “I cannot say. I have never seen her. You know that Japanese ladies do not mingle with men in your shocking tojin fashion.”

CHAPTER V—The Coasts of Nippon

At once I set about perfecting myself in certain practices which so far had afforded me little more than idle amusement. The knack of holding on a Japanese clog or the lighter sandal by gripping the thong that passes between the great toe and its mate is not acquired at the first trial or at many to follow. Still more difficult is the ability to sit for hours, crouched on knees and heels, in the Japanese fashion. I practised both feats with a patient endurance born of intense desire. Yoritomo had suffered as great inconvenience while learning to wear Occidental dress and to sit on chairs.

There were many other accomplishments, hardly less irksome, in which I had to drill myself, that I might be prepared to play the rôle of a Japanese gentleman. For recreation between times, I devoted my odd hours to cutlass fencing with an expert maître d’armes and to pistol practice. For this last I purchased a brace of Lefaucheux revolvers, which, though a trifle inferior to the Colt in accuracy, possessed the advantage of the inventor’s water-proof metallic cartridges. The convenience and superiority of this cartridge over the old style of loading with loose charges of powder and ball only need be mentioned to be realized.

Yoritomo was so desirous of witnessing the outcome of President Bonaparte’s manipulation of politics that we lingered in Paris until the coup d’état which marked the fall of the French Republic and the ascension of Bonaparte to the imperial throne as Napoleon III. Confirmed by this event in his opinion of the instability, violence, and chicanery of Occidental statesmanship, my friend announced his readiness to leave Europe.

The American packets had already brought word of the sailing of Commodore Perry from Newport News on November the twenty-fourth. As his route to China lay around the Cape of Good Hope, there had been no need to hurry away on our shorter passage by the Peninsular and Oriental route across the Isthmus of Suez and down the Red Sea.

We sailed on January the third, 1853, and, confident of our advantage of route, stopped twice on our way, that Yoritomo might study the administration of the British East India Company in Ceylon and India and the Dutch rule in Java. As a result, we did not reach Shanghai until the end of April.

It is in point to mention that during the voyage I gave my friend frequent lessons in Western swordsmanship and in turn received as many from him in Japanese fence, using heavy, two-handed foils of bamboo. Though the Japanese art is without thrusts, I was taught by many a bruise that it possesses clever and powerful cuts.

At Shanghai, we found already assembled three ships of the American squadron, including the huge steam frigate Susquehanna. The Commodore was expected to arrive soon from Hong-kong in the Mississippi.

My plan had been to charter a small vessel, and run across to the Japanese coast, where we hoped to be able to smuggle ourselves ashore, and make our way to Yedo in the disguise of priests. Owing, however, to the alarm of the foreign settlement over the victories of the Taiping rebels in the vicinity of Shanghai, there were few vessels in port and none open to charter.

We were already aware that, under the strict orders of the Navy Department, we could not join the American expedition without subjecting ourselves to the fetters of naval discipline. As a last resort and in the hope of gaining the assent of the Commodore to land us in disguise, we might have considered even this humiliating course. But the very object of Yoritomo’s return to his native shores was to reach Yedo and present his case to the Shogun’s government before the arrival of the foreigners.

Fearful of delay, we hired a Chinese escort and rode south across country to Cha-pu, on the Bay of Hang-Chow, the port from which the ten annual Chinese junks sail to Nagasaki. Though our escort did not always manage to prevent their bigoted countrymen from making the journey disagreeable for the “foreign devils,” we reached our destination without loss of life or limb.

The vile treatment of the Celestials was quickly forgotten in the graciousness of our welcome by the little colony of Japanese exiles whom we found located at Cha-pu. Careful as was Yoritomo to conceal his identity from his countrymen, they at once divined that he was a man of noble rank, and invariably knelt and bowed their foreheads to the dust whenever they came into his presence.

The Cha-pu merchants were greatly impressed by such deference on the part of the proud little men of Nippon, yet neither this nor my gold enabled us to obtain passage on one of their clumsy junks. The five vessels of the summer shipment to Nagasaki were not due to sail before August, and the jabbering heathen refused point-blank to risk the extinction of their Japanese trade either by advancing the date of sailing or by chartering a separate junk. Their unvarying reply was that no one could land anywhere in Japan without being detected by the spies.

One merchant alone betrayed a slight hesitancy over refusing us outright, and he, after dallying with my ultimate offer for a fortnight, at last positively declined the risk. I next proposed to buy a junk and man it with fishermen from the Japanese colony. But Yoritomo soon found that not one of the exiles dared return to Dai Nippon, great as was their longing.

Mid-May had now come and gone. Hopeless of obtaining aid from the Chinese, we rode back overland to Shanghai, agreed that it would be better to sail with Perry than after him. To our dismay, we discovered that the American squadron had sailed for the Loo Choo Islands two days before our arrival.

In this darkest hour of our enterprise we chanced upon our golden opportunity. Shortly after our departure for Cha-pu a New Bedford whaler, the Nancy Briggs, had put into Shanghai to replace a sprung foremast. She was now about to sail for the Straits of Sangar, bound for the whaling grounds east of the Kurile Islands. I met her skipper upon the bund, and within the hour had closed a bargain with him to land us on the Japanese coast within twenty miles of the Bay of Yedo. For this I was to pay him a thousand dollars in gold, and pilot his ship through Van Diemen Strait.

By nightfall Yoritomo and I were aboard the Nancy Briggs with our dunnage and had settled ourselves in the little stateroom vacated by the first mate. We awoke at sunrise to find the ship under way down the Whang-po to the Yang-tse-Kiang. Another sunrise found the whaler in blue water, running before the monsoon out across the Eastern Sea.

Though far from a clipper, the Nancy Briggs was no tub. We sighted Kuro, the westernmost island of Van Diemen Strait, and its blazing volcanic neighbor Iwogoshima, on June the second, eight days over a year and nine months since the Sea Flight bore me up the superb Bay of Kagoshima. The interval had been crowded with events in our physical and mental worlds scarcely less momentous to myself than to my friend.

But it was no time for me to indulge in retrospection. I had engaged to navigate the Nancy Briggs through the narrow waters of an uncharted strait. The rainy season was well under way, with all the concomitants of heavy squalls and dense fogs. As already mentioned, a lucky glimpse of Kuro, soon confirmed as a landfall by the red glare of Iwogoshima, enabled me to set our course to pass through the strait.

We ran in under reefed topsails, feeling our way blindly by compass and log in true whaler fashion. The Yankees took the risk as a matter of course, but I, between the difficulty of calculating the effects of the capricious squalls on our headway and my ignorance of the set of the powerful currents around this southern extremity of Japan, found my responsibilities as pilot no light burden. I was correspondingly relieved when a rift opened in the smothering masses of vapor which shrouded all view of sea and land, and I saw looming up abeam the well-remembered point of bold Cape Satanomi.

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.”

“I’ve heard of that whaler’s trick,” I replied, gripping his broad hand. “And the gig is unsinkable with those breakers aboard. We’re bound to win through. I’ll lash our dunnage in the sternsheets myself.”

The moon went behind a cloud, but one of the sailors raised the lantern that he was holding beneath the bulwark and set it within the gig. Our bundles were soon secured, and we had only to lean upon the bulwark and gaze over the starboard bow towards the dim coast of Awa. Though under shortened sail, the old Nancy ran before the gale at so famous a rate that within two hours the outpeeping moon showed us the furious surf along the rocky coast, two miles on our starboard beam.

As agreed, the skipper now put the ship’s head to the northwest and stood on across the mouth of the inner bay until we sighted the surf on the western coast. Our time had come.

CHAPTER VI—A Wild Night

The gig already hung outboard. At the word from the skipper, Yoritomo sprang into the sternsheets and I into the bow, ready to cast off. Six men stood by to lower away and one to cut loose our cask drag, which had been swung outboard in a handy sling.

“Ready, skipper!” I called.

“Aye, aye—Good luck to you, sir!” he cried, and wheeling about, he began bawling his orders to bring the ship about on the port tack.

I had chosen a moment when the moon was edging out through a cloud rift, so that the deft-handed Yankees had ample light for their work. Within half a minute the ship, already running close aslant the waves, came around into the trough of the sea. Over she heeled, until she was all but lying on her beam ends. A little more and she must have turned turtle. The sea boiled up alongside until the water poured over the bulwark. Yet our men stood coolly to their posts.

“Let go the falls!” I shouted, above the howl of the gale.

The gig splashed into the seething water. In an instant I had cast loose the bow block.

“Clear!” cried Yoritomo from the stern.

“Cut!” I yelled.

The oil cask plunged from its severed sling as the gig swung swiftly down the receding wave to the leeward of the Nancy. I caught one glimpse of the gallant old whaler staggering up and swinging her stem around into the gale. A faint cheer came ringing down the wind. Then we were out from under her lee, in the full sweep of the gale.

Though I had always prided myself upon my skill in handling small craft, I must confess that the narrow gig would have swamped or turned turtle within the first minute had it not been for our drag and the breaker floats. Before we had swung around to the drag, a comber broke over us and filled our little cockleshell to the gunwales. As she came out of the smother, still afloat but heavy as a log, we fell to with our bailers like madmen. We now knew she could not sink, but without freeboard she would not ride head on to the cask, and the first wave that caught us broadside might roll us over.

Fortunately the oil oozing from the cask was already filming over the surface around us, so that high as we were flung up by the racing billows and low as we sagged into their troughs, no more crests broke upon us. The moment the boat rode easier, I sprang upon a thwart and gazed about for a parting glance of the Nancy Briggs. But the moon was already covered by a wisp of the scurrying stormrack. When its silvery rays again shone upon the wild sea, I fancied that I caught a glimpse of the whaler standing out towards the open ocean on the starboard tack.

The deep booming of surf on a rocky shore brought my gaze about, and as we topped the next wave I saw that we were abeam the high cliffs of Cape Sagami, at the western point of the entrance to the inner bay. I swung aft into the sternsheets, where Yoritomo crouched ankle-deep in the wash, still frantically bailing.

“Belay!” I shouted.

He dropped his bailer, and looked over the side at the surf-whitened shore in blank astonishment.

“So swift!” he cried, “so swift!”

“Wind, wave, and tide,” I rejoined. “I’ve known a boat to make less speed under sail. Only trouble, with our present bearings, we’ll pile up on that outjutting point of the east coast.”

“Before that, Uraga,” he replied.

“According to chart, we’ll drift clear of the west coast, and there’ll be no guard-boats out of harbor to-night.”

“But the moonlight; they may sight us,” he insisted.

“A mile offshore, among these waves! Even if they had night-glasses, they could not tell the gig from a sampan, nor ourselves from storm-driven fishermen. You say the bay swarms with fishers.”

“Then there is now only the danger of delay from being cast up on the east shore.”

“A delay apt to prove permanent if we drift upon a lee shore in the surf that’s running to-night,” I added.

“I know you fear death as little as I do,” he said. “We are brothers in spirit. But that my message should be delayed or lost—the gods forbid!”

“We’re not yet on the rocks, Tomo. We’ve deep water and to spare for a while,” I cried, springing up to take our bearings as the moon was again gliding behind the clouds.

We were now well past Cape Sagami and opposite a bight whose southern shore, lying under the lee of its hill-crowned cliffs, was free of all surf. Leading down through the face of the cliffs from the terraced hillsides above were many wooded ravines, at the foot of which villages nestled upon bits of level ground near the water’s edge. Here was a haven that might possibly be gained by casting the drag adrift and rowing in aslant the wind. But it was below Uraga, Yedo’s port of entry for the native craft, and Yoritomo had impressed upon me the great need to win our way past that nest of government inspectors and spies. The attempt to run under a lee would be no more desperate an undertaking beyond Uraga than here.

I crouched down again beside my friend, and waited anxiously for the next glimpse of the moon. But the weather had suddenly thickened. Gusts of rain began to dash upon us out of the blackening sky. The rifts closed up until there was not even a star visible, and the rain increased until it poured down aslant the gale in torrents. The roar of the pelting deluge drowned the boom of the surf and beat down the wave crests. We had not even the phosphorescent foam of the combers to break the inky darkness about us.

The rain was too warm to chill us, but the down-whirling drops struck upon our bare limbs with the sting of sleet. We crouched together in the sternsheets, peering westward into the thick of the aqueous murk in search for the lights of Uraga. One glimpse would have given us fair warning to prepare for my desperate scheme to work under the lee of the point some two miles beyond.

Death was inevitable should we drive past that point, across the bend of the bay, to the outjutting cape on the east shore. Nor was it enough for us to clear the cape. Even should we escape destruction there, and even should we drift on up into the northeast corner of the bay, across from Yedo, we would no less certainly perish in the surf. On the other hand, could I but win the shelter of the point above Uraga, out of the full sweep of the in-rolling seas, I might be able to sheer over to the west shore and gain the shelter of one of the capes shown on the chart drawn for me by Yoritomo.

Failing to sight the lights of Uraga, I was in a pretty pickle. To cut adrift from our drag was quite sufficiently hazardous without the certainty that if we put in too soon we should go to wreck on the Uraga cape, and if we held on too late, be cast up on the outjutting point of the east coast. We were utterly lost in the dense night of whirling wind and rain and swift-heaving waves. Without means to measure the passage of time, I could not even reckon our position by estimating our rate of drift.

“No use watching, Tomo,” I at last shouted. “We could not see even a lighthouse so thick a night, and we’ve drifted past by now. Hand me your dirk.”

“Aye,” he replied, and I felt him turn about to where his dunnage was lashed down. In a few minutes he turned back and thrust the hilt of his short sword into my hand. He asked no questions, but waited calmly for me to direct him.

With a few touches of the razor-edged blade I cut loose the oars, which had been lashed under the gunwales. As I pressed the dirk hilt back into his hand, I gave him his orders: “Go forward and cut the line when I say; then aft, and stand by to bail.”

Without a word he crept away towards the bows through the down-whirling deluge and blackness. I followed to a seat on the forward thwart, and waited while three of the great billows flung us high and dropped us into the trough behind them. As we sagged down the slope of the third, I dipped my oar-blades and shouted, “Cut!”

The fourth wave shouldered us skyward. As we topped the crest the feel of the wind on my back told me that the gig’s head was falling off to port. A quick stroke brought her back square into the wind. We shot down the watery slope, but before we could climb to another crest Yoritomo had crept past me to his post in the pointed stern.

With utmost caution I headed the boat a few points to westward, and began to pull aslant the waves, with the wind on our port bow. It was a ticklish moment, for I did not know how the gig would handle. Without the drag of our abandoned cask, she might well be expected to fall off into the trough of the sea.

The struggle was now on in desperate earnest. But as I bent to my oars with all my skill and strength, I realized by the way the gig responded to my efforts that we had at least a fighting chance. Yet it was no easy matter to hold the bows quarteringly to wind and waves as we shot up and down the dizzy slopes, and Yoritomo was kept busy bailing out the water that all too frequently poured in over the rocking gunwales.

At last, through the howling of the gale and the slashing roar of the rain on the waters, I heard a deeper note, the welcome boom of the surf on the west shore. Whether we were as yet abreast the cape above Uraga I could not tell, but I held on as before, regardless of whatever reefs or shoals might lie off this rocky coast. Soon the surf roar, which had sounded abreast of us, seemed to fall away. I gave a shout, and bent to my oars with redoubled energy. We were drifting past the point, out into the turn of the bay beyond.

After a quarter-hour or so, to my vast relief the force of the wind lessened and the waves ran lower. We were edging around the cape, under the high lee of the westerly trending shore. Another quarter-hour, and we were in comparatively quiet water.

“Tomo,” I called, “shall we attempt a landing? We can make it with ease under the shelter of the hills.”

“So near across the point from Uraga?” he answered. “Could we not coast up the west shore? Every mile we float nearer to Yedo is two miles of walking saved.”

“But what if we should fetch up on a lee shore? You’ve marked more than one promontory on the west coast.”

“Hold farther out, then,” he said. “By morning we might drift all the way up the bay and across the Shinagawa Shoals, into the mouth of the Sumida River.”

“Clear to Yedo?” I cried. “Yet your chart makes it less than thirty miles, and it’s only a question of holding the boat a few points aslant the wind. We’ve seen how lightly the gig rides. There’s only the danger of those promontories, and I’ve the wind to steer by. We’ll do it, Tomo!”

“Commodore Perry may already be at Nagasaki,” he added, by way of final argument for haste.

“Give me your robe,” I said.

He slipped off the loose garment without demur, and crept forward to press it into my hand. We were now in water in which the boat could be safely allowed to drift without guidance. I flung the oars inboard and lashed the robe to one of them so as to make a small triangular sail. While I worked I gave Yoritomo his instructions. Soon the sail was ready. I handed it over to my friend, and with the second oar for rudder made my way aft to the sharp stern. A few strokes brought us around with the wind on our port quarter. Immediately Yoritomo stepped his oar mast through the socket in the forward thwart, and set sail.

Though so small, the little cotton triangle drew well, as I could tell by the ease with which the gig responded to her helm. Another proof was the quickness with which we ran out from under our sheltering highland into the full sweep of the gale and the high waves of the open bay. Scudding aslant the wind as nearly north as I could reckon our bearings from the drive of the rain torrents, we hurled along through the black night, utterly lost to all sense of time and distance.

After what may have been two hours, or possibly three, the rain slackened to a fine drizzle and the wind began to lull, blowing in fitful gusts and veering about in a way that left me only the run of the waves by which to shape my course. Soon after, to my surprise, the great rollers began to lessen in height, clear proof that we had come under the lee of a headland. Outwearied by the long struggle, I decided to try for the shelter which it seemed to offer. But before I could give the order to Yoritomo to shift sail, a roller broke aboard us, filling the gig to the gunwales.

“Unship and bail!” I yelled.

“Bailer gone!” he shouted, and he crawled aft with his robe sail wrapped about the oar.

A second roller broke over us. We were among breakers, either upon a bank or a shoaling beach. As I labored to hold the gig stern on to the waves, I cried out in anticipation of the coming shock: “Hold to your oar! Cut loose the bundles. Stand by to pass me mine.”

“Ready!” he called back.

The gig struck softly on a mud bottom, and was instantly smothered under a third breaker. But the impact drove her over the bank, and we found ourselves afloat in fairly calm water. An attempt to pole with my oar showed me that we were in water deeper than I could sound. A last puff of the expiring gale caught the boat and swung her about broadsides. Before I could bring her bows on again she struck bottom on another mud bank.

Through the lessening drizzle I could see the outline of a rising shore near at hand. The boat lifted in the low swell that rolled over the outer shoal, drove forward a few yards, and stuck fast. A downward thrust of my oar told me there was hard bottom a foot below the ooze.

“My bundle, and follow!” I cried.

Yoritomo thrust my dunnage into my hands, and leaped overboard after me. Ten yards through knee-deep mud and water brought us to the foot of a sloping embankment. We climbed up it and stretched out upon its turf-covered crest, panting with the fatigue of our long battle against wind and wave, yet aglow with delight at our victory.

“Come,” said Yoritomo, after a short rest. “The rain has ceased. I will put on my robe and lead you to an inn or farmhouse.”

“Wait,” I replied. “The dawn must be near. We cannot leave the gig to be found by the first man who comes this way. We must sink her.”

Lightened of our weight, the gig had cleared and drifted in almost to the foot of the embankment. By rolling we sluiced enough water from her to set her afloat, and I set about knocking out the bungs of the breakers, while Yoritomo fetched heavy lumps of turf and clay from a break in the face of the embankment. As the boat sank deeper into the water with the filling of the breakers and the weight of the clay ballast, we thrust off into deeper water. At last I was satisfied, and shoving her out into the channel between the mud banks, I rocked under the gunwales until she filled and sank.

A few strokes brought me back into shallow water, and I soon regained the embankment. In the faintly gathering light I saw that Yoritomo had already put on not only his robe but also his leggings and sandals. He thrust my hat and revolvers into my hands and knelt to bind on my sandals and leggings.

“The clouds break,” he exclaimed. “It is a good omen. Let us hasten on.”

“On?” I said. “We cannot go far without rest.”

“Until we find a farmhouse or inn,” he urged. Springing up, he swung his dunnage upon his shoulder and led off inland.

A few steps brought us down the far side of the embankment into a shallow swamp. As we splashed through the oozy slush I felt tufts of soft grassy stems brushing against my ankles at regular intervals.

“Rice field,” muttered my friend before I could question him.

The stench of the strongly fertilized paddy swamp was almost insufferable, and our discomfort was not lessened by the maddening swarms of mosquitoes. We crossed a narrow dyke and splashed along with quickened step through a second field worse than the first. Still another dyke, and then, beyond the third field, we sighted higher ground, above which loomed the dimly outlined tops of gigantic trees.

“The Tokaido!” cried Yoritomo.

A hundred yards across the last fetid swamp brought us up the bank and into a broad smooth road beneath the dense gloom of a double row of cryptomerias. We were upon the famed Tokaido, or East Sea Road, which connects Yedo with Kyoto and the southwestern provinces of Japan. To my surprise, Yoritomo crossed over, instead of turning along the road. As I followed, he pointed to a wooded hill, upon which a group of lofty trees and the black mass of a small peak-roofed building stood out against the brightening sky.

Skirting the edge of the Tokaido, we soon came to a path that led us windingly around through high coppices and up the far slope of the hill. The last of the clouds were now sweeping away to the northward, and the eastern sky was gray with the pallor of the false dawn. We gained the round of the hill, and passed between a pair of heavy wooden pillars, cross-tied with a square lintel-beam and a massive roof-beam, or framework, with upcurving ends.

“A torii,” muttered Yoritomo. “We come to a temple, not an inn.”

Though I caught a hint of disappointment in his tone, he led on up the bend of the hillcrest and across a shrubbery, to the front of the small grass-thatched building in the midst of the towering pines.

“It is a miya—a Shinto temple,” he murmured. “Yet we need food as well as rest.”

“They will give us no food, when we come as fellow-priests?” I exclaimed in mock indignation.

“Even when a miya is not deserted, the priests of Shinto seldom dwell in or near it,” he replied, and I heard him sigh. He was as near outspent as myself. But suddenly I saw his bent form straighten. He faced about to the western sky, with upraised arms, and his voice rang clear and strong in a salute of reverent joy: “Fuji-yama! Fuji-san!”

I turned to look. Far away to the west-southwest, beyond the black silhouette of broken mountain ranges and lesser peaks, a marvellous pyramid of rosy flame towered high aloft in the starry sky. Red dawn, as yet unseen by us, had turned the snow-clad crest of the superb peak into the likeness of a gigantic blossom, pendent from mid-sky.

“Fuji-san!” repeated Yoritomo, and he fell upon his knees and bowed his forehead to the ground, overcome with rapture.

Swiftly the roseate effulgence brightened and shifted hue to a glorious gold that shone with dazzling brightness against the blue-black sky. The eastern sky was now flaming high with the red dawn. Lighter shone the great peak-crest, its gold changing under the magic transmutation of day into the cold, burnished silver of its glistening snows. The sun leaped above the horizon, and the last shadow of night fled.

Yoritomo rose from his knees and caught up his bundle.

“Come within,” he said. “We can at least rest, and it is well we should not be seen until we have arranged our dress.”

Caught in the midst of a yawn, I signed assent, and he led me past the stone image of a sitting fox to the narrow entrance of the temple. Pushing in after him with my bundle, I found myself in a gloomy chamber, shut off from the rear half of the temple by a close wall. There was no idol to be seen, and the only furnishing of the bare little room was a small mirror of polished bronze hung about with strips of white paper.

Yoritomo kowtowed before this curious symbol of Shinto, rose to his knees, and waved me to lie down. I stretched out, yawning, and he sank down beside me. In another minute we were both fast asleep.

CHAPTER VII—On the Tokaido

We wakened, stiff and sore, a full two hours after noon. Yoritomo, who was first to rouse up, ran to the door to look out. He turned about, with an urgent cry that cut short my yawnings in the midst: “Up! up, brother! We’ve slept past midday. We must lose no time if we expect to reach the heart of Yedo by nightfall.”

“Do you remember the two biscuits I wrapped in my bundle?” I demanded. “I’m famished. A drink and a biscuit for me before I take to any road race.”

“We must dress and eat. There is water outside,” he responded, and he slashed open our bundles.

Not a drop of water had penetrated the oil-paper wrappings. We slipped off our stained and tattered Yamabushi robes to put on the silken garments which he had carried from his country all the long voyage to Europe and back. First came a pair each of the gorgeous baggy trousers, or hakama. They were provided with side slits, into which we tucked the skirts of our silk kimonos. The narrow twisted obi, or sash, served to hold my revolvers and the magnificent Masamune sword presented to me by Yoritomo that eventful night in the cabin of the Sea Flight.

My friend thrust his sword and dirk into his girdle, not in the horizontal Japanese fashion, but vertically, as I wore mine, that the scabbards might not show beneath our outer robes. His writing case and the bag containing his smoker’s outfit were secured on the other side by passing the carved ivory buttons of their cords through a fold of the girdle. Inside, about my waist, I placed my twenty odd pounds of metallic revolver cartridges, while he packed within his bosom a lighter though bulkier load consisting of white silk foot-mittens, extra sandals, a roll of crinkly writing paper, and the box with the remainder of his gold coins.

Over all we drew our cloak-like coats, or haoris, of rich stiff silk, upon which the circled mallow-leaf trefoil of the Tokugawa crest was embroidered on back, breasts, and sleeves. These coats were in turn covered with our dingy priest robes, and we were outwardly prepared to take the road. There remained our inward preparation. We took our ship’s biscuits and passed out the narrow entrance.

My first glance was directed towards Fujiyama. But the glorious peak was shrouded from view by a bank of envious clouds. Yoritomo turned at once to a hollowed stone from which trickled a rill of pure water. We drank and crouched down beside the spring to gnaw at our biscuits. At first I was too hungry to heed my surroundings. Yoritomo, however, soon pointed southward, through a gap in the shrubbery, to where, some four miles distant, a hilly promontory jutted out into the bay.

“That is the town of Kanagawa,” he said.

“Where?” I asked. “I see no smoke. Do you mean that little gray blotch low down on the edge of the promontory?”

“No, that is only a small fishing village lying among the rice swamps,—Yokohama, I believe, is its name. Kanagawa lies about two miles to the west of it. You see no smoke because in Japan we use charcoal only. Kanagawa is the last station on the Tokaido where the daimios stop over night before marching into Yedo.”

“But the sons of the daimios repose amidst the splendors of the temples,” I bantered him.

He glanced about reverently at the decaying little edifice. “The spirit of Shinto is simplicity. Yet I wish I could have entertained you with proper hospitality, and that we might enter Yedo in the manner to which we are entitled by our rank.”

“Ours?” I questioned.

“Are we not brothers?” he countered.

“You know the position of my family at home,” I said. “But it is a far cry from America to Dai Nippon. I have read what the Dutch writers tell about the hauteur of your nobility. Even as a friend of a kinsman of your Emperor, will I be received?”

“I am not the kinsman of the Emperor,” he replied.

“You’re not? Yet you said that your father, the Prince of Owari—”

“He and the princes of Kii and Mito are the heads of the August Three Families, descendent from the three sons of Iyeyasu. He is the cousin of the Shogun, not of the Emperor. One alone can be called Emperor of Nippon. That is the Dairi—the Mikado, lineal descendant of Ama-terasu, the Sun Goddess. The sacred Son of Heaven lives in awesome seclusion at Kyoto.”

“Yet I am aware that your shoguns, whom the outer world has known as the temporal emperors, have ruled Nippon with mailed fist since the days of my ancestor, the English counsellor of Iyeyasu.”

He stared at me in blank astonishment. “The English counsellor of Iyeyasu!—he your ancestor?—Anjin Sama your ancestor?”

“Will Adams, the first Englishman to reach Japan,” I answered. “Surely you have heard of him.”

“Adams! Was that the English name of Anjin Sama?—and he your ancestor? You never told me!”

“How much have you told me of your family, Tomo?”

“But Anjin Sama, of all the kami—!” He gazed at me with a strange glow in his black eyes. “You know our belief, Worth, that the dead come back many times and are often born again.”

“The Buddhistic reincarnation,” I remarked.

“And the Shinto rebirth of the kami—the high ones,” he added.

“But what of Will Adams?” I demanded, aflame with curiosity. “I know that he married a Japanese wife and left children by her. Have they any living descendants?”

He looked away, with an enigmatic smile.

“You may learn more of your ancestor, brother, after we reach Yedo. There is an Anjin Street, whose householders still hold a yearly festival in his memory.—Come; it is time for us to be going.”

As he spoke, he rose and started around the corner of the temple. I followed him to the corner and back along the side of the decaying building, below the ragged thatch of the eaves. At the rear corner we came to a narrow gap in the shrubbery looking down upon the Tokaido. Yoritomo suddenly turned about, with his fingers to his lips, and drew me down.

“Kwannon be praised!” he whispered. “They did not see us! For common beggar-priests to be caught staring down upon a daimio’s train—Namu!”

I peered forward and down into the Tokaido, which ran past less than a hundred yards below us. Along the broad roadway was marching the most curious and stately procession I had ever seen. It was the retinue of a daimio who was going up to Yedo for the half-year’s visit required by law. By far the greater part of the procession was already strung out Yedo-ward farther than the eye could see. But half a thousand of the rearguard had yet to pass.

Used as I was to the sight of Yoritomo’s garments, there was much to surprise and interest me in the appearance of the daimio’s retainers. Though as short as our women, they were of a more stalwart build than I had expected, and the samurais, or two-sword men, carried themselves with a proud assurance that went far towards offsetting their lack of height. Among the loose ranks of these gentlemanly men-at-arms marched lesser retainers,—grooms with grotesquely accoutred led-horses and porters with rattan baskets and lacquered chests.

Yoritomo whispered that the box-like palanquin, or norimon, of the daimio had long since been carried past by its bearers. Yet this rear end of the procession marched slowly along with a demeanor that could not have been exceeded in solemnity and stateliness had the daimio been present in its midst. The hush was almost oppressive. No man among them called out or spoke or even whispered. The only sounds were the scuffle of sandals in the dusty road and the muffled thud of straw-shod horse hoofs.

“What is the crest?” I whispered, staring at the insignia embroidered on the outer garments of every retainer and marked on every piece of baggage. “It looks like a white cross in a circle.”

“A circled cross,” confirmed Yoritomo. “You saw it in Kagoshima Bay,—the crest of my friend Nariakiri, Daimio of Satsuma.”

“The Prince of Satsuma!” I exclaimed. “Why not hasten down and join him?”

“Hasten down, and be slashed or beheaded by the first samurai we passed!” rejoined Yoritomo, grasping my sleeve as I sought to spring up. “Even without these tattered robes it would mean certain death. Each daimio is appointed a time for passing along the highroad. Any one who breaks in upon the procession may expect to die without benefit of medicine.”

“But he is your friend, and if you are so anxious to reach home by nightfall—”

“There are no by-ways through the rice swamps,” he replied. “We must trail after the rearguard.”

“They move at a snail’s pace!”

“It will bring them into Shinagawa, the southern suburb of Yedo, about sunset. In Shinagawa I expect to find a friend with whom we can spend the night. Meantime we may as well wait here until the cortege has gone on four or five miles. I will take advantage of the opportunity to write a petition asking permission to present a memorial to the Shogun.”

He crept back around the corner of the temple. I stretched out in the balsamic shade of the pines, and watched the slow passing of the procession. When the last strutting samurai had marched on up the road, I gazed around at the landscape. Across the full width of the bay the mountains on the promontory of Awa loomed dimly through the haze, while the blue waters between, already stilled from their night’s turmoil, were dotted with the white sails of junks and fishing smacks.

Inland the golden sunlight streamed down out of the sapphire sky upon a scene no less peaceful and charming. About me and far to the northward the land lay in broad plain, for the most part cut up into a checkerboard of rice fields. Here and there rose knolls and hills, some terraced to the top for rice, others wooded, and the most eminent crowned with temples that reminded me of China. In the rice swamps naked peasants, knee-deep in the slush, were transplanting tufts of young rice, while about them waterfowl waded or paddled, untroubled by the presence of man. Above them soared numbers of eagles and hawks. Birds were to be seen or heard on every side, but I noticed a marked absence of animals from the landscape.

Some time after the rear of the procession had disappeared up the Tokaido, Yoritomo came back around the temple, and said that we must start. I pulled my hat brim low over my face, and swung after him down the hillside to the smooth road.

For a time we met no other traveller. The road had been swept clear by the procession. But we soon came to groups of odd little shops and inns, strung along the roadside in almost continuous rows. Within the open fronts of the shops cotton-robed tradesmen knelt on matted platforms in the midst of their cheap wares, while from under the shallow porticos of the inns quaint little maidens with powdered doll-like faces and narrow skirts smiled at us invitingly and bowed until we could see the great bows at the back of their sashes. But Yoritomo kept on up the road at a fast pace, unmoved by the alluring glances of these charming little waitresses.

Within the second mile we began to encounter a stream of travellers released from the post town of Kawasaki by the passage of the daimio’s train. We were the first to come up from the south in the wake of the daimio, but the people we met had no more than a casual glance for a pair of dirty-robed Yamabushi priests.

As we swung along through their midst I peeped out at them between the meshes of my loosely woven hat brim. My first observations were that they averaged far below the height of Americans, and that clothing was rather a minus quantity among all but the white-robed pilgrims and the silk-clad samurais. The brown skins of peasants and fishermen, porters, grooms, and beggars were either innocent of all covering except narrow loincloths or at most limited to a shirt-like kimono of blue-figured cotton, a straw hat, and sandals.

Aside from the aristocratic swordsmen, these people were the merriest I had ever met. When not smiling and chatting, they were laughing or singing. Among the peasants and groups of pilgrims were several women, the younger of whom possessed a buxom rural prettiness. The married women looked aged and withered, and pleasant as were their smiles, my Western eye was repulsed by their shaven brows and the gray-black teeth which showed between their rouged lips at every smile.

At Kawasaki we swung briskly down to the bank of the Rokugu River, where bronzed ferrymen, stripped to loincloths, stood waiting for passengers in their big flat-bottomed punts. A boat in which the party of a samurai horseman had embarked was being thrust off. Before Yoritomo could check me, I sprang forward to leap aboard. In a flash the samurai drew his two-handed sword and aimed a blow at me that would have split my head in two had I not dropped backwards beyond reach. Furious at the wanton attempt to murder me, I sprang up and fumbled for a revolver as the boat shot out from the bank.

“Hold, brother!” warned Yoritomo, springing to catch my arm. “Remember, we are only begging priests. He had the right to resent our company. What’s more, he is a hatamoto, one of the Shogun’s samurais. If I remember aright, he is Yuki, a captain of the palace guard.”

“He tried to cut me down in cold blood!” I protested.

“It is a right of all samurais to kill lower-class men, and you affronted Yuki by seeking to board the same boat. Here’s a smaller boat putting off.”

We ran and leaped aboard the small boat as it swung into the stream. For fellow-passengers we had a wealthy old merchant, dressed in plain cotton robes, and the half-naked bearers of his narrow U-shaped basket-litter. In paying our ferry fees, Yoritomo offered one of his gold pieces, and the boat’s owner being unable to make full change, he gave him the difference. As a result the polers bent to their work with such hearty good-will that we reached the opposite bank a full three lengths in advance of the samurai’s boat.

We sprang ashore past a bevy of little brown children who were paddling, stark naked, in the mud. Shortly beyond we met a pair of neatly dressed girls, whose large mushroom hats rested upon black silk skullcaps. They smiled and greeted us in a familiar manner. Yoritomo muttered a hasty response, and pointed back at the samurai. The girls hastened to advance upon that quick-tempered gentleman, with their battery of charming smiles and alluring glances in full action.

“Courtesans?” I asked, as we swung on along the Tokaido.

“No, not joros, only bikunis—begging nuns, daughters of Yamabushi priests. None would be quicker to penetrate our disguise,” replied Yoritomo, and he quickened his pace.

After a mile or so we again met a crowd of southbound travellers, people caught at Omuri by the closing of the highroad. We hastened on to Omuri, the first post village out of Shinagawa. Recently as the daimio’s procession had passed, the place was already alert for business, its shops wide open and teahouse girls standing coy-eyed in the verandas. We hastened on through, pausing only to buy some large dried persimmons that caught my eye.

A mile behind the town we came up with the rear of the Satsuma procession, and were compelled by prudence to slacken our pace to a tortoise-like gait. Making the best of the situation, I relished my persimmons and viewed the scenery. There was much novelty and pleasure in the sight of orange trees and bamboos and even an occasional banana and palm growing in the same garden with pines and other evergreens, while the deep-thatched roofs of the farmhouses were oddly attractive with the beds of blue irises and vivid red lilies blooming on their flattened ridges.

Above us towered the giant red-limbed cryptomerias of the Tokaido, with their pine-like foliage, while on our right the road skirted along near the sparkling blue waters of the bay, upon which sailed flotillas of quaint fishing craft and high-sterned junks that might have served as models for a painter of the sixteenth century.

Yoritomo touched my arm and pointed to something lying on the opposite side of the road. I looked closer, and saw that it was the corpse of a peasant, mangled by terrible sword cuts.

“A drunken fool,” he said, unmoved by the horrible sight. “No sober man would have been found in the road after it had been sanded for the passage of a daimio.”

Before I could reply, a little bell tinkled in the road behind us, and Yoritomo drew me quickly out of the middle of the thoroughfare. I glanced about and saw two runners racing towards us at headlong speed. One carried the little bell I had heard, the other bore a small bundle on a stick, across his shoulder. Both were stripped to their loincloths, though at first glance I thought that they were clad in tights, so completely were they covered with animal designs tattooed in red, blue, and white.

In a moment the couriers had dashed past us and were flying on, regardless of the stately cortege that barred the road. With the murdered peasant fresh in mind, I looked to see the Satsuma men turn about with sword and lance to avenge this outrage upon the dignity of their lord. To my vast astonishment, the solemn ranks split apart all along the centre of the road at the first tinkle of the little bell, and the naked runners raced on without a check through the midst of the procession.

“Carriers of despatches for the Shogun,” explained Yoritomo in response to my look of amazed inquiry.

Here was food for thought to last me into Shinagawa, slow as was our pace. Nowhere in the world had I witnessed such solemn state as was exhibited by this daimio cortege, a state so exalted that men were killed for venturing within sword-sweep of the procession’s vanguard. Yet at the tinkle of a bell, all had yielded the road to a pair of naked, sweaty, unarmed postmen. What, then, must be the sublimity of rank and state arrogated to himself by the master of this prince? Yet the father of the quiet, mild-mannered gentleman trudging along in the dust beside me was the blood kinsman of that Oriental lord of lords.

We were close upon Shinagawa before I realized that the sun was far down the western sky and fast sinking behind a bank of black clouds. As I looked up my eye fell upon a rude pillory, standing near the roadside on ground raised above the level of the rice swamp. Along the top of the rude structure sat five roundish objects sharply outlined against the blood-red sky. Looking closer, I made out ghastly human faces—a crow flapped up from the ground, with a hoarse cry, and began pecking at one of the severed heads.

CHAPTER VIII—The Geisha

Day was fading into twilight as we trailed after the Satsuma men into the heart of Shinagawa. On either side of the Tokaido extended rows of handsome two-storied inns and teahouses, set one against the other without a gap except where divided by narrow cross streets. The upper windows and balconies of every building were sealed over with opaque screens to prevent persons from looking down upon the daimio and his retinue, and across the entrances of the side streets were stretched frail ropes of twisted straw, behind which kneeling crowds waited for the passage of the last Satsuma man.

The street was guarded by wardsmen, or householders, bearing iron staves with large rings at the top. We shuffled along between these warders, with downbent heads, perilously close to the rear of the procession. Three or four times the wardsmen seemed inclined to halt us, but we passed by them with outward indifference, keeping well in advance of the crowds that surged out behind us into the Tokaido from the unbarred side streets.

Midway of the long suburb Yoritomo turned sharply into a narrow street leading towards the bay. I stooped under the barring rope after him, and found myself in the midst of a dense crowd of men, many of whom were still kneeling. Packed side by side in the jam were cotton-clad tradesmen and silk-gowned samurais, half-naked artisans and nobles in lacquered norimon palanquins. All alike were provided with paper lanterns, round, square, or octagonal in shape, and inscribed with crest or name in Chinese ideographs. These lanterns and the rows of similar ones hung along the fronts of the houses were being lighted as twilight deepened into darkness.

Suddenly the crowd through which we were attempting to pass swayed forward and filled the air with the clash of their wooden clogs on the hard ground. The rope had been taken down and the crowd permitted to surge out into the Tokaido. While we worked our way in against the outpouring stream, I was pleased to see that there were no women in the jam. But on either side of the street wide-flung screens exposed to view artistically decorated interiors where smiling young girls in gorgeous dress knelt on the mats, twanging odd music on their three-string samisens or preening themselves before mirrors of polished bronze. In other houses dainty waiting maids fluttered about like butterflies, serving the hungry guests.

The crowd in the street was the sweetest one with which I had ever come in contact, and this was no less true when we elbowed our way through a band of breech-clouted porters. The explanation was not far off when, with the breaking of the jam, we approached a building through whose latticed front issued clouds of vapor and a babel of chatter and laughter.

When opposite this house I glanced in through the wide spaces of the lattice and was startled to see a large company of nude men and women splashing about together in a great tank of hot water. It was a public bath—public in all senses of the term! As we passed by, a dripping nymph stepped up from the water within a foot of the lattice and gazed idly out into the street, as naively unconscious in look and manner and as innocent of costume as Eve before the Fall.

Yoritomo swung by unheeding, and hastened on to the open front of one of the larger teahouses. A moment later we had entered a long stone-paved passageway that ran back through the centre of the building. On one side we looked in upon the charcoal ranges and sniffed the savory odors of the inn kitchen, on the other we viewed through half-closed screens the commoner guest-rooms of the house.

At sight of our tattered robes bowing waitresses sought to usher us into one of these front apartments. Yoritomo thrust past them and on down the passage, fifty paces or more, until we came out into a veritable fairy garden, strung with myriads of painted lanterns. As we seated ourselves on a low bench under a grape arbor, the host overtook us and, bowing curtly, asked what we desired.

“Does Kohana, the free geisha, still live here?” asked Yoritomo.

“Kohana San, the artist patronized by princes, still honors my poor establishment,” replied the man.

“We would speak with her,” said Yoritomo, pushing back his hat until his pale aristocratic face could be seen in the soft lantern light.

The landlord, who had been about to turn us off, hesitated and answered in a more respectful tone: “The most famous dancer of Yedo enjoys the favor of daimios. How then can I bid her come to attend those who seem no more than Yamabushi?”

Yoritomo drew a sheet of paper from his bosom, and taking his brush pen from the case at his girdle, wrote a few small ideographs in the classical Chinese character. Swift as were his strokes, the first letter was scarcely drawn before the host was kowtowing, forehead to earth. He rose, touched the finished writing to his brow, and clattered off on his high wooden clogs across the fairyland of his garden.

“You have declared yourself!” I exclaimed.

“To him, no. My manner of writing convinced him that I am of high rank. But I wrote only a quotation from one of the ancient poems. Even if he is learned enough to read it—”

“Will this dancer then grasp your meaning?”

“Kohana is one of the higher class of geisha called shirabyoshi,—one of the superior artists. She is of samurai blood, and the old geisha who bought her in childhood, and trained her after the manner of geishas, gave her the highest of women’s culture. Before I left Yedo I bought the girl’s freedom from service. She was then in her eighteenth year.”

“You bought her freedom!” I murmured. “You who look so coldly upon women!”

“I could do no more for her,—and no less. We loved, but love cannot bind a true samurai when duty calls. I vowed to give my life to the service of the Mikado and Dai Nippon. To have lingered with her after that would have been despicable.”

I sat silent, reflecting upon the strange customs of this queer people and the hidden depths in the nature of my friend. All my intimacy with him, backed by close study of Kämpfer and Siebold, had failed to prepare me for the bizarre contrasts and impressions of the mysterious land of Nippon.

In the garden about us pleasure-seekers strolled along the rough-paved walks on lacquered clogs, but none disturbed our seclusion in the arbor until the landlord came shuffling back. He kowtowed before us, with loud insuckings of his breath. I could scarcely hear his murmured words: “Kohana San sends humble greetings to the honorable writer, and entreats him and his honorable companion to honor her lowly dwelling with their august presence.”

“We need no guide,” replied Yoritomo, as the landlord rose to conduct us.

The man again prostrated himself and held to the obsequious salute until we had moved away. The moon gave no light through the curtain of drifting cloud, but as we hastened along a winding path, in through the gay rows of swaying paper lanterns, I made out amidst the graceful trees and flowering shrubs grotesque bronze figures, odd shaped rocks, and quaint pagoda-topped stone lanterns.

Soon the path led down along the shore of a tiny lake, whose still surface glinted with the many-hued reflections of the lanterns. We crossed over at one corner on a frail bamboo bridge, arched like a quarter-round of hoop, and passed through a fern-set rockery, to a gateless opening in a hedge of bamboos. Beside this entrance, resplendent in a miniature kimono of silver-wrought blue silk, waited a doll-like little maiden of twelve, who, having duly kowtowed to us, tottered ahead on her high clogs, to conduct us to the house of her mistress.

A few steps brought us to a rambling red-tiled bungalow with broad, low eaves and deep-set verandas. Mounting daintily before us up the rough stone steps, the child knelt upon the polished planking of the veranda, to remove our sandals. If she was astonished at our mudstained leggings, she showed not the slightest sign, but bowed us into the house with winsome smiles.

Though all the screens were open, the interior before us was dark as midnight. The little maiden reached down one of the lanterns that hung from the eaves among the tinkling wind-bells, and lighted us in across two tiny rooms to a large apartment fronting on a miniature garden court. All one side of the room was open to the court veranda, and two of the other walls were formed of sliding screens, but the far end of the room was closed with a solid partition containing a shallow double alcove.

The little maid hastened to place two soft leather cushions for us, hesitating just perceptibly over the second until Yoritomo indicated that it was to be laid beside the first, close before the raised floor of the larger recess. Having kowtowed while we reposed ourselves on knees and heels, she pattered about the room with a taper, lighting the pith wicks of several little saucer lamps that were set about the room in square paper frames.

I glanced around the apartment in the increasing glow. The soft, thick mats, all about three by six feet in size, were set in the floor on a level with the slotted sill-beams of the wall-screens. Unlike those I had seen in the front rooms of the inns, they were not only immaculately white and clean but were bordered with strips of silk. The sliding screens of the room were rimmed with gold leaf and painted with exquisite landscapes in rich soft colors. The low ceiling and the recessed wall behind us were finished in fanciful cabinetwork, and the beautiful grain of the two woods used was polished without oil or varnish to a surface that shone like satin.

The one side of the recess was an open closet, filled with shelves and drawers; the other was the sacred tokonoma mentioned by the Dutch writers. Upon its wall hung a blue silk banner, painted with a summer view of Fuji-yama. Below, on the polished floor, a vase of plain earthenware held a single fragrant spray of Cape jasmine. Across from the vase stood the bronze figure of a playful kitten, with paw outstretched in graceful invitation. Before it were placed a few grains of boiled rice, a tiny cup of amber liquid, and a stick of burning incense. It was the emblem and godlet of the geishas,—a frolicsome young cat, behind whose velvet touch lurked cruel claws, ever ready to mangle.

Would the worshipper of this image meet her former lover with feline treachery?

As I asked myself the question the room re-echoed with a ripple of gentle laughter, melodious as the note of an Æolian harp, sweeter than the tinkle of fairy bells. I faced to front, and saw floating towards us a vision as wondrously beautiful as a Buddhist angel. Against the jet blackness of her high coiffure glinted comb crests and pin heads of amber and coral, while from slender throat to tiny feet she was enveloped in a robe of scarlet silk, gorgeously embroidered with flowers in gold thread, and her plump little hand fluttered a vividly colored fan.

Like my friend’s, the girl’s face showed the samurai type in its oval contour, small mouth, and aristocratic nose,—features so markedly different from the broad, flat faces of the lower classes. The characteristic lack of prominence of her brows and the bridge of her nose lent to the upper part of her face a mildness of expression well in keeping with the inimitable gracefulness and gentleness of her bearing, but her rosebud mouth and lustrous black eyes held all the subtle allurement of a Spanish Carmen’s.

Bound about as she is by narrow skirts, modesty compels the Japanese woman to assume in walking a short, scuffling, intoed gait, with forward bent body and head. Yet even to this awkward movement Kohana San, the dancer, contrived to give a semblance of grace as she hastened forward to prostrate herself at the feet of my friend.

The little maid was tripping from the room. The geisha sank down before us, her forehead upon the mat between her little olive-hued hands, and her body quivering with an excess of emotion which even a lifetime of training could not enable her to repress.

Yoritomo gazed down upon her as serenely impassive in look as a bronze Buddha. Yet beneath his placid tone even I could detect the hidden note of tenderness: “Kohana, we have come to you from a long journey.”

“My lord!” she murmured, “to my lowly house first of all!”

She rose to her knees and gazed into his face with a look of such radiant love and devotion that I forgot on the instant my suspicion of her loyalty. And in the same moment I forgave the thick powdering of rice flour upon her face, and the dark red stain of thistle juice upon her lips, and the greasy pomade with which her hair was matted and stiffened.

For a minute or more the lovers sat silent and motionless, gazing into one another’s eyes, Yoritomo gravely smiling, Kohana melting to happy tears. That was their greeting after three years of separation!

“Tomo,” I whispered in English, “do you not see how she has waited and longed for you all the time since you left her? Console her for the past! I will go out and leave you.”

“Do not trouble,” he replied. “Have I not told you that we Japanese do not kiss and embrace?” He turned and spoke to the girl, who was glancing at me out of the corners of her long eyes with intense curiosity: “Kohana, my brother is weary, and we have not bathed in two days.”

“My lord! no bath in two days!” she gasped, and she clapped her hands sharply. There sounded an answering “Hai!” and the little serving maid appeared at the end of the room—“Quick, girl! see that the bath is heated.”

As the child trotted away, Yoritomo peered out through the open side of the room into the dim garden. “Close the shoji,” he ordered.

Kohana hastened across, and from either end of the room drew white paper screens out along the slotted sill and lintel-beams, until the room was shut in from the garden. Within a minute she was again kneeling before us. Yoritomo smiled into her beaming face, and said: “You will now be honored by seeing the countenance of my august brother. He is my friend and benefactor.”

At the word, I lifted off my deep-brimmed hat and looked at her, smiling. What she had expected to see I cannot say. My oval face and even my nose might easily have passed for Japanese, and my cheeks were tanned almost to the darkness of Yoritomo’s. But the two days’ stubble upon my lip and chin was very thick for the beard of an Oriental, and my forehead much too white, while yet far more my round blue eyes spoke of a terrifying world all unknown to this gentle girl. Before my look her eyes widened and purpled with terror. She sank down at my feet in speechless fear.

“Is it so Kohana welcomes my friend and brother?” asked Yoritomo in quiet reproach. “There is nothing to fear.”

The girl straightened and gazed up at me, wide-eyed yet with a smile on her trembling lips. “Tojin sama! forgive the rudeness of one who is foolish and ignorant! Accept the humble greetings of your servant!”

“Is the tojin so fearful a beast or devil in the eyes of Kohana San that she still trembles?” I asked.

“Woroto Sama is my friend and brother. He has been my benefactor during all my travels among the tojin,” added Yoritomo.

“Among the tojin, my lord! You have travelled among the barbarians?—beyond the sea?”

“To the five continents. I sailed away with Woroto Sama towards the rising sun, and sailed back with him from the setting sun. The world is an enormous ball, Kohana, and I have been around it as a gnat might crawl around Fujiyama.”

“My lord is no gnat!” she laughed. “I do not understand. Even Fuji-san rests broadly upon the back of Dai Nippon, and Dai Nippon upon the back of the great fish. How then could my lord go beneath? Did my lord see the great fish?”

“I saw greater things than the fish of our myth. Beyond the seas are lands vastly greater than Nippon. I have sailed in the black ships and seen the power of the tojin. Tell me quickly. Has word come of the fleet from America?”

“No more, my lord, than a message from the tojin at Deshima that the black ships had sailed for Dai Nippon and would force the Shogunate to open other ports than Nagasaki.”

Yoritomo’s eyes glowed. “We are in time, brother! All now turns upon the wisdom or folly of the Elder Council.”

Kohana rose to her feet barely in time to mask my face from the gaze of the child-maid. She had returned to announce that the bath was ready.

“Go bid the landlord prepare his best dishes for my guests. Then see that no one enters unannounced,” said her mistress.

She Dropped Her Blue Robe from Her Graceful Shoulders

The child turned away in smiling obedience. Yoritomo signed me to rise and follow Kohana, who took up a lantern and thrust open one of the screens of the inner wall. We walked along a smooth planked passage twenty or thirty paces to a little room with sloping slatted floor. Beside the door stood clothes-racks, on which hung thin towels of cotton print. Three or four buckets of cold water ranged along the wall, and at the lower end, half sunk below the level of the floor, was a great tub, or wide-mouthed barrel, from which warm vapors were beginning to rise.

The geisha hung her lantern to a convenient hook, and unwrapped her long crepe obi, or sash. In a moment she had slipped off her gold-brocaded robe and disclosed a still more beautiful under kimono of azure silk embroidered with gold dragons. Loosening the inner obi, she dropped her blue robe from her graceful shoulders, and stood before us as nude and as unconscious as the nymph of the public bath. Though I was aware that she was a member of a profession that her people class little above the courtesans, one look into her earnest, smiling face convinced me that her thoughts were innocent of all immodesty.

“Our customs are not the customs of the Occident, but they are now your customs, Woroto,” said Yoritomo, and he ungirt his priest robe.

There was no escape, and my hesitancy was brief. My friend had submitted to many customs repugnant to him, in my country. Since this was a custom of his country, I could do no less. His matter-of-fact manner, taken with the girl’s naive unconsciousness of all wrong, helped me to realize that true modesty and purity are of the spirit and not of outward convention.

The ordeal was no light one, yet long before the bath was finished I had begun to forget my embarrassment in the girl’s ecstasies of wonder and delight over the whiteness of my skin. Though distinctly a brunette in all else than the color of my eyes, I seemed marvellously fair to this daughter of the Orient, whose own skin was of the olive tint of southern Italy and Spain.

With strict impartiality she aided our ablutions with the cold water, and then, at a sign from Yoritomo, led me first to the tub. It was scalding hot, yet the girl betrayed surprise when I insisted upon the addition of two cooling buckets before I would venture in. Even with that I was almost parboiled before Kohana had finished shaving my friend and dressing his hair.

When at last he came to take my place in purgatory, the girl deftly set about drying and shampooing me, still exclaiming upon the fairness of my skin, though it was now far other than “snow white.” Having dried the “honorable tojin sama,” she proceeded to shave my face and crown with her queer little razor and to reknot my cue. To my vast relief, she then cast aside my Yamabushi robe and soiled leggings, and left me to dress myself in the rich garments I had worn inside my tatters.

CHAPTER IX—Nippon’s Greetings

Cleansed and refreshed, we returned to compose ourselves upon our mats in the guest-room, while Kohana San, once more resplendent in gala dress, hastened out for our dinner. We were not long kept waiting. She returned with a lacquered tray, or rather, a low table, twelve or fourteen inches high. This she placed before me, and was out and back again in a few minutes with a similar tray for Yoritomo.

Each tray held many little bowls of steaming hot food and a pair of plain chopsticks, cut from a single piece of wood and not yet split apart at the upper end. At first I hesitated to begin eating under the eyes of this most cultured of geishas, but my single biscuit and the handful of persimmons had served only to whet my appetite, and the savory odors of many of the dishes before me were very tempting.

After a thimbleful of hot sake, a curious bittersweet wine made of fermented rice, we fell to on the dinner, which Kohana served with utmost deftness and grace, ever alert to refill our porcelain sake cups between dishes. The meal was odder than any I had eaten even in China,—soup, omelet, fishballs, and sponge cake; soup, boiled crawfish, lotus-root salad, and salted plums; thin soup, sweetmeats, pickled bamboo shoots, and stewed cuttlefish; thick soup, sliced duck, and stewed vegetables; sea slugs with soy sauce, loquats stewed with sugar, soup, more soup, and last of all plain boiled rice, without sugar—which is scarce in Japan,—and without milk—which is unknown.

Throughout the eating of this odd medley of exotic dishes, Kohana was either pattering out to her kitchen, or back with trays held level with her forehead, or replenishing our sake cups from her heated flask of the amber wine. The time came when we could eat no more. The last dish was removed, and Kohana set before us a tray with smoking materials and an embossed copper-lined brazier, or hibachi, in which a few twigs of charcoal glowed upon a bed of ashes. I had smoked too often in Japanese fashion with Yoritomo’s outfit not to know how to roll a pellet of tobacco and fill the tiny silver bowl of the pipe now offered me.

As we settled back on our cushions and drew slowly at the silver mouthpieces, our hostess rose and began to dance for our entertainment. Well was she named the best dancer in Yedo! Unlike our Western artistes, she did not glide about, but stood in one place, seldom shifting her feet, yet swaying body and arms and head in movements of enravishing grace and beauty. For one of the dances she withdrew, to reappear in a haori whose gorgeously embroidered sleeves, fluttering from her extended arms, suggested to me the movements of a butterfly even before Yoritomo explained that the performance was called the Butterfly Dance.

My friend had, however, graver matters in mind than amusement. In consideration of my pleasure, he had waited this long. Now he made a slight gesture, and the girl sank down, flushed and smiling. He spoke with austere abruptness: “Enough of play. When I went upon my travels, Kohana said she would be my eye and ear in Yedo.”

“My lord knows that few things fail to reach the ear of the free geisha.”

“Begin. Dai Nippon has been a sealed book to me since I sailed from Kagoshima in the black ship with Woroto Sama.”

She kowtowed and whispered: “There has been no change at Kyoto.”

He bowed low at the veiled reference to the mysterious Mikado. “And Yedo?” he demanded.

Again she kowtowed, though not so low. “His Highness, Minamoto Iyeyoshi, is still Sei-i-tai Shogun. Iyesada Sama, his august son, is no stronger either in head or body.”

“The Council of Elders?”

“Midzuano Echizen-no-kami is now head of the Council. He does not enjoy the favor of the Household.”

Yoritomo nodded slightly. “The Gosanke?”

“My lord’s august father, Owari dono, enjoys excellent health. My lord’s august elder brother, Mori—” she hesitated, “he is not so well.”

She said nothing as to his mother, and he did not inquire, but sat silent, apparently meditating on her last words. I surmised that they carried a meaning beyond my knowledge of the idiom. When, after a few moments, he lifted his lowered lids, she went on without prompting: “The Prince of Kii is still given over to the pleasures of his women, the No dances, and the exploits of his wrestlers. His august heir is still a child, and Kii dono has not adopted an elder son to take over the burden of the title.”

“The child may become a factor should Iyesada Sama depart this life before his august father,” said Yoritomo.

“My lord!” exclaimed the girl, “the choice of the Mito faction is well known to be set on Keiki, who has been adopted by the Hitotsubashi family. He is the favorite of his father.”

“The former Prince of Mito!” muttered Yoritomo, his handsome face distorted with the first look of hatred and anger I had ever known him to betray. “Old Rekko, lord of the frogs in the well! When I left he was still imprisoned in one of his secondary palaces.”

“His Highness the Shogun holds steadfast to the counsel of your august father and of Ii Kamon-no-kami. Keiki has won over the Council of Elders, but the Household is with my lord’s party.”

“Satsuma also is with us. He does not forget that my father brought about the marriage of his adopted daughter to Iyesada,” said Yoritomo.

“Over-confidence is a traitor in camp, my lord. Always before this, Kii has stood with Owari against Mito, until the saying has become a proverb that no son of Mito can be chosen to sit on the stool of the Shoguns. But now Kii swims in pleasure, and Owari stands alone against Mito. Keiki aims high. My lord has read how Hideyoshi, though barred from the title of Shogun, attained to the higher office of Kwambaku.”

“He would climb to greater power on the ruins of the Shogunate!” muttered Yoritomo.

“Either Shogun or Kwambaku,” replied the girl. “And what chance has he of the first as against my lord, should Iyesada Sama go from us and leave the heirship in doubt?”

Yoritomo gravely shook his head. “My life is given. If I live, it will not be to sit on the seat of Iyeyasu my forefather. Our choice is the child of Kii dono. I have overcome passion. The thought of power does not tempt me.”

Kohana prostrated herself at his feet, with a soft insucking of her breath. “My lord has overcome all passion and desire! He has entered upon his Buddhahood!”

“Far from it, foolish girl!” he exclaimed. “My heart is black with hatred of my father’s enemies, the real enemies of Dai Nippon, and I burn with desire to win glory in the service of the sacred Mikado. I am far indeed from the blessed peace of Buddhahood.—Tell me, has Keiki made any open move?”

“Not as yet, my lord,” she replied, straightening and glancing apprehensively about the room, “not yet! But—” her voice sank to a whisper—“his plans are laid to win the release of his father. With the old Prince of Mito free and high in the favor of Iyeyoshi, my lord can easily foretell—”

“The plans?” demanded Yoritomo.

The girl began to breathe quickly. “My lord has heard how it is said that the Princess Azai holds the place that should be Iyesada’s in the heart of their august father. It is unbelievable that a parent should consider a daughter before a son, yet this has come to me in a way that leaves no room for doubt. My lord, would a father turn his face away from one who had saved his heir from the blades of drunken ronins? The Princess Azai is more to His Highness than is his heir.”

“Keiki thinks to win favor by a trick!”

“To-morrow, after midday, when the Princess is returning from worship at Zozoji, there will be ronins waiting. Blows will be struck. They will bear off the norimon of the august lady. Keiki will rush to the rescue. What wonder if a fond father soon signs the pardon of the rescuer’s parent?”

“To-morrow, after midday,” repeated Yoritomo, in a voice still and impassive as his face. He turned to me. “You will do well to get a full night’s rest, brother. We have work before us.”

“But what’s in the wind, Tomo?” I demanded in English, as Kohana ran to draw out a pair of silk quilts from a drawer in the lesser recess of the tokonoma.

“There’ll be the devil to pay,” answered my friend, the glint in his narrowed eyes boding ill for the “devil.” He nodded towards Kohana. “I will tell you more fully in the morning.”

The hint was sufficient. I rose and followed the girl down a short passage to a small room that was to be my sleeping chamber. She prepared my bed by spreading the two quilts on the soft mats of the floor and placing at the head a little lacquered box rounded on the top with a small roll of soft paper. This was the pillow. Over all she hung a large canopy of mosquito netting. There remained only for her to light a tiny night-lamp, kowtow, and withdraw. Five minutes later I was fast asleep, with my jaw upon the paper pad of my wooden pillow.

How soon my dreams began and how long they continued I have not the slightest idea. But I had a prolonged succession of the most fantastic visions imaginable, in which brown-skinned, slant-eyed elves and gnomes, clad in outlandish costume, were ever committing outré and unexpected antics. Sometimes the performance was of grotesque horror, as when severed heads, dripping blood, flew at me with malignant ferocity. This must have come from a blending of Yoritomo’s Japanese goblin tales with the ghastly spectacle of the execution-pillory outside Shinagawa.

After a time I found myself sauntering through an Oriental Paradise in company with a Buddhist angel, who bowed down and worshipped me as the God of Snow. Immediately I became a snow image, fast melting to liquid beneath the noontime sun. I melted and flowed away down through a fetid rice field, into the blue Bay of Yedo. Too late I discovered that my angel was none other than the beautiful Princess Azai, daughter of the Shogun.

I was now aboard a Japanese junk, flying up the bay to save the Princess from the guns of the American fleet. The giant steam frigates were fast overhauling my slow craft, their decks cleared for action and their gun-ports swung open, tier above tier, ready for the bombardment of ill-fated Yedo. Suddenly the junk struck upon a shoal, over which it was driven by the billows, only to strike again and again. As the mast went by the board and the hull crunched to splinters under my feet, the stately Susquehanna, flying the blue-starred broad pennant of Commodore Perry, swung around and fired a thunderous broadside into our shattered wreck.

With a shout of terror, I leaped up, and found myself reeling about a matted floor, in the dim light of a tiny lamp. An instant later the floor heaved and rocked under me with a sickening motion that flung me to my knees. All around I could hear the creak and groan of straining timbers. Above me my dizzy eyes made out a ceiling of odd-patterned bamboo-work and swaying walls whose gilt panels glinted in the faint light.

The screens of the end wall suddenly brightened, then shot open, and through the gap Yoritomo came darting towards me, lantern in hand.

“Earthquake!” he cried, springing across to extinguish my little night-lamp, which was on the point of jarring from its shelf.

The floor steadied with the passing of the shock. I crawled from under the mosquito net and staggered to my feet. Yoritomo seized me by the sleeve, and dragged me out the way he had come. I heard Kohana calling to us to hasten. We turned a corner, and saw her dart towards us across a room, beyond which gleamed a square of early daylight. Again the floor lurched. We all three sprawled prone upon the mats, while about us the rafters and beams creaked louder than before and the walls seemed toppling to crush us.

“This way!—the shutters are open—this way, my lord!” shrilled Kohana. She plucked at Yoritomo’s sleeve, and scrambled back, tossing about in a manner that would have been irresistibly comic but for the terror of the moment.

We followed as best we could, now crawling, now staggering half erect, like drunkards. Through it all Yoritomo clung fast to his lantern, too dazed to extinguish it, yet fearfully conscious of the peril of fire. All around me things were reeling. I clutched at a swaying wall-post, a few feet short of the gap in the wooden shutters that closed in the outer side of the veranda. Before I could glance about, a fearful shock flung me across the veranda and out into a bed of roses.

To my sorrow, I found that roses in Japan have thorns. Also I caught a glimpse of the massive tiled eaves seemingly about to pitch upon me. I leaped out of the roses, clear across a path, and fetched up with a skip and a trip, coming down squarely in a bed of purple irises. In perfect unison with my own arrival at stability, the earth spasms ceased as suddenly as they had begun.

From behind a bush on my left a voice murmured in quavering, gurgling delight: “My lord, you are safe, unharmed?”

“Unharmed,” answered Yoritomo, and he called in an anxious tone, “Woroto!”

“All present and accounted for,” I replied, rising dizzily, to face them across the bush in the red dawnlight. “You are not hurt, Kohana San?”

“Nor my lord!” she cried, with a soft chuckle of delight. “After all it was only a little wriggle of the fish’s tail.”

“Fish’s tail?” I inquired.

“The great fish upon whose back rests the land of Dai Nippon,” explained Yoritomo, with a twinkle in his black eyes.

“If my lords will pardon the rudeness of their servant, she will go in and prepare the morning bath for them,” said Kohana, and before I could protest against such rashness, she hastened up across the veranda, into the house.

“Tomo!” I exclaimed, “you let her go, when the house may fall any moment! It must be shattered! That little wriggle was a cataclysm.”

“The shock was sharper than the usual weekly tremor,” he admitted. “But the house is built to withstand all but the heaviest quakes. The massive roof takes up the vibration of the shock, which is already broken at the loose post joints.”

Following his gesture, I looked under the house, through the open lattice-work, and saw that the house posts rested each with its hollow foot perched upon the round point of a half-embedded boulder. He nodded reassuringly, and led the way back into the house. Within I found the mortised beams and panelled woodwork unharmed by the earthquake. Thanks to the absence of plaster and standing furniture, the only result of the shocks had been to fill the rooms with dust and upset the vase with the jasmine spray in the tokonoma of the guest chamber.

Yoritomo smiled and pointed to the undisturbed bronze kitten. “It is hard to disconcert a geisha or her god. Kohana will soon have the bath heated. After that, breakfast and a morning of delight. No other geisha in Dai Nippon can dance as dances Kohana.”

“Morning?” I repeated. “But the feigned attack of Keiki upon the daughter of the Shogun?”

“There is ample time, and the more we refresh ourselves the better.”

“Tell me more of the plot. Is it possible the government spies can be deceived by such a farce?”

“Death is never a farce.”

“Death?”

“You have heard me speak of ronins,—samurais who, because of their own offences or the death of their daimios, have become masterless men. Whether scholars, teachers, or criminals, all alike are men for whose acts their former lords cannot be held responsible.”

“And who no longer owe loyalty to their lords,” I added.

“Not in law,” he assented. “But suppose certain loyal retainers became ronins at the bidding of their master? The samurai code says that a man shall serve his lord even to the death. What greater joy to the Mito men than to give their lives for the freeing of their prince?”

“You should hasten to warn the Shogun!” I exclaimed.

He smiled in gentle reproof of my heat. “There are guards at the gateways of all bridges across the inner moat, and within are officials interested in barring out the bearer of a warning message. Remember, Keiki has won the favor of Midzuano, chief of the Council of Elders. Yet suppose the message should penetrate to the august ear of Iyeyoshi Sama. What follows? The Princess does not go to worship at the temple of Zozoji; no blows are struck; small credit accrues to the tale-bearer.”

“You would risk the life of the Shogun’s daughter—of the princess to whom you are betrothed!”

“There will be no risk of life—for her,” he replied.

“But the shock?—her terror?”

“The most delicate of our ladies are taught to withstand fear.”

“Consider the indignity to be suffered by a princess, your kinsman,” I argued.

“What matters the terror or the death or even the dishonor of a woman, weighed in the balance against that which I seek to accomplish? No; whatever the cost, I must win a favorable audience with the Shogun, for the sake of Dai Nippon and the sacred Mikado! It is a rare chance for us, Woroto. We will take part in Keiki’s badger game.”

“And, like the fox, snap the game from between his paws,” I punned.

He nodded. “With the aid of Kohana, we are to become priests of the official Jodo sect.”

“You said the Yamabushi are Buddhists. Why change?”

“Iyeyasu built Zozoji for the Jodo sect. They have charge of the temple and the tombs of the four Shoguns who are buried at Shiba Park. Therefore we go as Jodo priests, lately arrived from Kyoto.”

“With sharp arguments and loud words for the Mito ronins,” I added.

He caught at my sleeve. “Not that!—not your pistols, brother. To fire a gun within the bounds of Yedo is certain death!”

CHAPTER X—The Princess Azai

Noon found us ready for the start, our swords girt on under the flowing priest robes, and hats drawn low to shade our faces. Upon our feet iron-shod sandals were bound firmly over the white silk foot mittens, in keeping with our role of monks of noble blood, vowed to a pilgrimage to Zozoji and just in off the road. But the hilts of our swords were within convenient reach inside the edge of our robes, and, despite Yoritomo’s warning, my revolvers were no less ready. I assured him, however, that they would not be used unless the occasion justified.

When it came to the parting, I looked to see Kohana protest or at least shed a tear over this short ending of her lover’s visit. After three weary years of absence he had come back to her for a single night, and was now going from her again, it might be to his death. Yet she neither wept nor betrayed any other sign of grief. Smilingly she conducted us from her house and down the path to the gateway, where he signed her to stop.

“If all goes well,” he said, “I will send for you or come again to Shinagawa.”

She kowtowed, with a softly murmured word of parting, “Saionara!”

“Farewell, Kohana San,” I responded. “The tojin carries away with him grateful thoughts of his kind and beautiful hostess.”

“Gracious indeed is the condescension of the august lord in deigning to overlook the conduct of one so rude and ignorant,” she said. Yoritomo was swinging away at a rapid stride. She rose quickly, and held out her hands, clasped palm to palm. Her eyes gazed up into mine, full of timid appeal, and her lips quivered with a pitiful smile. “Woroto Sama is a lord of the tojin, he is powerful. While he slept I looked at the strange weapons he bears, and my lord told me their use. The tojin sama is a friend of Yoritomo Sama!”

“If they kill him, they kill me,” I answered.

With a swift movement she drew from her sleeve and pressed into my hand a dirk whose richly ornamented hilt and sheath told of a precious blade within. I would have sought to return the gift, but she sank down and beat the ground at my feet with her forehead. I thrust the dirk in beside my sword, and turned away, feeling that this girl of a despised profession had honored me with her trust and gratitude. Indeed, I might say she had ennobled me, since I had needed the dirk to become a samurai, a two-sword gentleman.

With hat brim down, hands demurely folded within priestly sleeves, and body waddling samurai-fashion from the weight of cartridges about my waist, I followed after my friend across the beautiful little landscape garden of the teahouse. There were many guests strolling along the shaded walks or lunching in the little kiosks which from the crest of a terrace looked out over the blue bay. But, unheeded either by guests or attendants, we passed up the garden and out through a wicket gate in the wall across from the teahouse.

As we came into the narrow alley upon which the gate opened, Yoritomo warned me to keep my hand on my swordhilt. On either side, preening themselves behind barred verandas, I saw rows of pretty young girls clad in gorgeous robes. We had entered a street given over to the joro, or courtesans. Throughout the length of the lane, samurais flushed with sake and evil-eyed ronins swaggered aggressively up and down, with swords cocked high in their girdles.

Twice we saw pairs of swashbucklers draw upon each other, but hurried past while their blades were yet clashing together in furious cut and parry. Without looking back or so much as glancing to right or left, we swung ahead through the groups of cut-throats and drunkards, and our steadiness, together with the priest robes, won us safe passage to the Tokaido.

Along the highway vice was for the most part masked behind the disguise of legitimate teahouse entertainment, and the rakes and ruffians bore themselves with a less truculent manner among the light-hearted smiling throngs of travellers and townfolk.

As we swung into the busy thoroughfare I caught my first view of Yedo, a view impressive only in the vastness of the city’s extent. Built in great part on low-lying ground, it stretched out along the curve of the shallow bayhead and inland to the northward, in a sea of gray unpainted roofs, partly relieved by an occasional temple or red-roofed pagoda rising among groves of trees. In the midst of this dull expanse rose an island of low hills, upon whose wooded crests the moated official quarter was built about the citadel-palace of the Shogun.

A mile along the high embankment which guards all the upper curve of the bay brought us to the black gate on the boundary between Shinagawa and Yedo. A few steps beyond it Yoritomo significantly drew my attention to a roofed notice-board, covered in large Chinese characters with the ancient edicts against Christianity. Shortly after he pointed out a temple in which were the tombs of the forty-seven loyal ronins and the lord for whose sake they achieved vengeance and martyrdom.

Somewhat farther on we left the Tokaido and angled off inland from the bay towards a great park called Shiba. It is formed of the grounds of Zozoji and its many subsidiary temples, tombs, and monastery buildings. A high-arched wooden bridge carried us over a canal, or tide-water stream, whose waters swarmed with the sampans of fishermen and roofed produce boats from up country.

A little beyond this muddy stream we entered the lovely cool glades of Shiba. The place was an Oriental paradise of giant trees and blooming shrubs, from which sounded the merry note of twittering birds, blended and dominated by the flute-like song of the Japanese nightingale; while about the smaller of the temples lotus leaves and blooming irises rose above the still waters of ponds stocked with tortoises and goldfish.

Yoritomo gravely led the way across this rear portion of the sacred park, along stately avenues of giant pines and cryptomerias and camphor trees, between rows of stone lanterns, under torii of wood and stone and bronze, and past grotesque bronze images, to enclosures where broad and massive temples shouldered up the ponderous weight of their gray-tiled roofs. We came out into the main road and turned along it a short distance to the entrance of Zozoji, a magnificent two-storied gate guarded on either side by hideous red and green demons.

“Namu Amida Butsu!” chanted my friend, and mingling with a crowd of worshippers, we passed through the ancient gateway into the great courtyard about Zozoji.

The temple stood at the head of a flight of red steps, and, with its huge red pillars and enormous Chinese roof of gray tiles, was by far the most imposing edifice I had yet seen in Japan. A mighty sonorous boom smote upon our ears. I looked to the right, and saw a priest swinging a suspended beam against the rim of an immense bell.

Yoritomo turned across to a building on our left, and between the thunderous peals of the great bell addressed a young priest who was writing in the veranda. I could not follow their low conversation, but presently I saw my friend hand the priest one of his gold coins, in return for a slip of paper. After this we joined another group of worshippers, climbed the temple stairway, and, transferring our sandals to our bosoms, glided in upon the mats of the great hall. We stopped a little way inside, between the great lacquered contribution-chest and a superb dragon-wrought brazier from which was rising clouds of incense.

Yoritomo stared for some moments into the gloom of the vast interior, shook his head slowly and edged about to watch the courtyard and gate. My experience in China had already acquainted me with the many startling resemblances between Catholic Christianity and Buddhism in respect to priestly costumes, ceremonial, and houses of worship. Yet I found much to interest me in the gorgeous panelled ceilings, the carvings and arabesques and bronze-work of this grand temple.

At the far end, within the railed space that I might call the chancel, appeared the high altar, crowded about with the shrines of various images, colossal candlesticks and lotus blossoms of silver, bells and drums for the use of the officiating priests, memorial tablets, bronze offerings, and emblematic banners. All about the hall on the soft matting moved crowds of priests and worshippers, tapping bells, murmuring prayers, clapping hands, and bowing before the many shrines.

A touch from Yoritomo drew my gaze around. I looked out into the dazzling sunlight of the courtyard, and saw the crowds falling back on either side before a band of samurais. In the midst of the band was a gilded norimon, beside which walked two silk-clad women.

“She comes. Follow,” whispered Yoritomo.

He led the way up the dim-lit hall to the chancel, and showed the paper he had bought from the young priest to an old monk in chasuble and stole. The priest eyed us sharply and stood hesitating until Yoritomo slipped a gold piece into his itching palm. At that he led us in behind the bronze screen, or rail, and left us bowing in a recessed shrine before a huge many-handed image of Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy.

Hardly had we gained this post of vantage when the sudden hush throughout the temple told of the entrance of the Shogun’s daughter. Though she had come incognito, a glance around the corner of our niche showed me the mass of the worshippers kneeling with forehead to floor. Through their midst advanced the cortege of the Princess, led by the venerable abbot, who, according to my friend, was a blood kinsman of the mysterious Mikado.

Fearful of discovery, Yoritomo drew me back into the denser shadow of the shrine. Soon, however, I heard the soft rustling of silk garments, followed by low murmurs and sibilant insuckings of breath. Aflame with curiosity, I turned half about, and ventured to raise my hat brim for a sidelong glance.

The lord abbot had passed on up to the high altar. But the Princess Azai stood only a few paces distant, a little in advance of her kowtowing women and samurais. She was looking up at the benevolent features of Kwannon in the gloom above us. The outline of her dusky hair blurred into the dark background, but her face, as if framed about with black velvet, stood out distinct in all the pure loveliness of an Italian Madonna’s.

Overlapping kimonos of gold-wrought rose and azure crepes draped her about in graceful folds from the base of her round white throat to her tiny feet, and her hands were hidden in sleeves whose tips almost swept the floor. Beautiful as was her dress, it won from me only a passing glance. My eyes returned to feast themselves on the innocent tender beauty of her face.

Her complexion, untouched by any cosmetic, was of an ivory whiteness, slightly tinged on the cheeks with rose. The adorably curved lips of her little mouth were of a clear coral red. Below her delicate high-arched brows her black oval eyes gazed out between the long lashes with the mildness of a young child’s and the divinely sweet artlessness of budding maidenhood.

Forgetful of all else in my wonder and delight, I thrust my hat brim higher and faced square about. A projecting corner of the shrine masked me from the kneeling attendants, but not from the Princess. Drawn by the intensity of my gaze, she lowered her glance and looked full into my face. On the instant, I knew from the widening of her eyes and the quick rise of her little bosom that she had made out my features through the shadow of our dim niche.

Yoritomo’s voice breathed softly in my ear, “Do not move!”

I waited, breathless, expecting to see the Princess cry out or sink down as had Kohana. Yet, great as was the awe and wonder in her dilated eyes, she neither shrank away nor called upon the guard to protect her from the blue-eyed apparition. Such perfect control on the part of a girl so delicately nurtured, so exquisitely refined in look and bearing, was more than I could withstand. Regardless of Yoritomo’s warning, I raised my head higher, and sought to express in a smile the utmost of my admiration for her courage and beauty.

Again her bosom rose and fell to a quick-drawn breath, and her lustrous eyes widened yet more. But the god or devil—whatever he might be—had been pleased to regard her with a kindly look. Etiquette, if not respect and gratitude, called for a polite response. A row of little pearls gleamed between her smiling red lips, and her lissome young body bent low in gracious obeisance.

A Row of Little Pearls Gleamed between Her Smiling Red Lips

Instantly Yoritomo grasped my arm and drew me around the far corner of the shrine. Before the Princess had straightened from her bow, we were slipping out through a narrow doorway into the broad veranda of the temple. The sudden vanishing of the priest-robed apparition must have seemed to her clear confirmation of its godly or ghostly nature.

In the veranda I would have stopped to whisper my blissful impressions of the girl’s beauty, had not my friend snatched his sandals from his bosom and imperatively signed me to strap on my own. The moment our footgear was secure, he hastened down around the rear of the temple and out through a postern, into a winding road that led us past the enclosures of two or three mortuary chapels. Had the occasion been different, I might have pressed my friend to show me these magnificent memorial tombs and temples of departed Shoguns. As it was, he did not pause until we had passed down a long row of stone lanterns and out through one of the beautiful secondary gates of Shiba.

At last he stopped in a vacant space, and turned to reproach me with mild friendliness: “You should not have so risked discovery, brother!”

“How could I help it?” I demanded. “She is very beautiful, Tomo! Candidly, I envy you your good fortune.”

He gazed into my glowing face, his own quickly stilling to the placid Buddha calm. “Form is an empty mask, a nothingness,” he murmured. “The love of women, the craving for power, the greed for gold,—all alike are lures to decoy the soul out of the upward path to Nirvana.”

“You have seen your future bride, and can speak of Nirvana!” I exclaimed.

“She is as pure and beautiful as an angel. Yet I looked into her luminous eyes and did not see my soul.”

“I saw her soul, you cold-blooded Buddhist! Her spirit is as beautiful as her face!”

“No, Woroto,—it was your own soul you saw shining in her eyes,” he replied.

“What do you mean?” I demanded.

He shook his head gently. “Who may penetrate the mysteries of the future? You may have loved her in some previous incarnation. As for me, I have given my life to the Son of Heaven, the holy Mikado.”

CHAPTER XI—Rout of the Ronins

For an hour or more we loitered about within view of the great gate of Zozoji, waiting for the cortege of the Shogun’s daughter to march out on its return trip to the citadel. That the Princess would come back through the main entrance was evident from the fact that the norimons of her ladies-in-waiting were stationed in the road at one side of the grand carved portal. Yoritomo stood beneath a camellia tree, seemingly lost in meditation, but I paced to and fro through the passing crowds, unable to restrain my impatience.

At last between the meshes of my hat brim I caught sight of the samurai escort of the Princess issuing from the gateway. In their lead was the quick-tempered hatamoto Yuki who had struck at me from the ferryboat at the passage of the Rokugu River. The bearers of the norimons moved around, and as soon as the ladies-in-waiting had taken their seats, the cortege formed in line, with one of the norimons before and the other behind the gold-lacquered palanquin of the Princess. We drew back behind a hedge of blooming privet.

Soon the cortege marched past us, at a slow and stately pace, though the absence of standards indicated to the public that the noble person escorted was travelling incognito and dispensed with the usual kneeling of the common folk along the road. I examined with intense interest the sturdy norimon bearers and the score of proud hatamotos, or shogunate samurais, who made up Yuki’s company.

These gentlemen-soldiers seemed to me to be picked men, but they wore no armor and carried no other weapons than the customary sword and dirk. Though their petticoat-trousers were neatly tucked up above the knees in the tops of long silk stockings, freeing their legs for quick action, their arms and forebodies were encumbered with the peculiar gauze-winged ceremonial jackets and the long sleeves of their haoris.

“That guard looks more like dress parade than action,” I commented.

“They are the pick of the best swordsmen among the hatamotos; yet they are all doomed men,” replied Yoritomo.

I caught at my swordhilt, no longer intent on the fringe of split bamboo which curtained the window of the Princess’s norimon. “All doomed?—And ourselves?”

“Mito will have planned to sacrifice as few retainers as possible. But though they will not be many, they will have the advantage of armor. Our sole chance of success lies in the method of fence you have taught me. Lunge for face or neck. Waste no thrusts on mail-clad bodies.”

“We can at least hold them until other rescuers run up,” I said.

He shook his head doubtfully. “Look down the bay. A rain-squall is coming. There will be few in the streets, and if Keiki rushes up first with his rescue party, we will be cut down with the ronins. As you say, we are playing against long odds, but the stake is big.”

“A little hot soy will flavor the rice,” I replied. “Lead on.”

He shuffled about, and we strolled out and along the road, keeping half a hundred paces behind the rearmost of the strutting hatamotos. Leisurely as was the advance of the cortege, we were soon clear of Shiba and approaching a hill that Yoritomo called Atago-yama. The eminence was provided with two means of ascent, a straight steep stairway and another one long and winding. The cortege passed by on one side.

We now descended into a low and thickly populated quarter, passing at every two hundred paces one of the gloomy gates which divide off all the streets of the lower city into wards of fifty or sixty houses. Each ward was given over to a particular trade or the sale of a certain article,—as a street of blacksmiths, squatting before their primitive forges, a street of toy merchants, another of lacquer-dealers, fan-makers, cabinet-workers, and so forth.

Shops and people differed little from those I had already seen, but for the first time I observed the lofty ladder watch towers, at the top of which hung firebells. The urgent need of such means of warning in a city built, for the most part, of tinder-like materials, was evident from a belt of ash-covered ground off to our right, in which the only buildings unburned were a few mud-walled storehouses.

My roving eye was recalled by a word from Yoritomo to be on my guard. Kohana had conjectured that the attack would be made near one of the moats, and we were approaching a boat-crowded canal or moat, the outermost of the line of fortifications that gird in the Shogun’s palace and the yashikis, or palaces, of the daimios. I loosened my swordblade in its scabbard, and held my hand ready to jerk up the skirts of my robes and tuck them in the back of my girdle.

The cortege moved slowly on down the busy street and out upon the old wooden bridge that arched across from the grassy slope of the nearer bank to the abrupt stone wall which Kämpfer calls the Outer Castle. We followed, warily scanning the band of samurais that approached from the far end of the bridge and the scattered groups that clattered up behind us through the crowds of common people. All alike, however, showed the utmost deference in avoiding close contact with the attendants of the Princess, and the crests of their respective daimios, conspicuous on the backs, breast, and sleeves of their haoris, proved that they were not ronins.

We plodded after the cortege, across the canal and through the bastioned gateway on the far side, out into one of the smooth wide streets of the official quarter. Here there were no commoners to be seen, and the few samurais scattered up and down the broad way were hastening to shelter before the first gusts of the coming rain-squall. But even the threatened downpour failed to hurry the hatamotos out of their stately strut. Seeing no sign of any ronins, I relaxed my tense nerves and looked about at the long walls of the yashikis which lined each side of the street.

I knew that these residences of the daimios each consisted of a mansion house surrounded by courts and gardens, all set in the defensive hollow square of the retainers’ barracks. What I had failed to picture from Yoritomo’s descriptions was the extent and odd appearance of these samurai quarters. One of them stretched along the road nearly a quarter of a mile, its continuous roof of red tiles broken only by a grand, ornate gate, midway of the monotonous façade.

The mortarless stone foundation walls of the yashikis rose from deep, curbed ditches that flowed along each side of the street. Above the high foundations the walls were of diagonally-set black tiles with wide joints of white plaster. Well up in this checkerboard surface, rows of small windows, stoutly barred against attack, projected in shallow bays.

A turn in the street brought us in view of the citadel just as the rain-squall came swirling upon us. Across the head of the street loomed up a mighty wall of cyclopean masonry, its granite base deep beneath the placid waters of a broad moat, its crest crowned with trees and square pagoda guardtowers. Our street rose to meet the causeway that ran along the moat bank and curved in to cross a wooden bridge. At the far side a huge bastioned gateway led up into the higher ground of the citadel.

Beyond the trees and pagodas that fringed the top of the titanic wall, I saw outlined against the blackening sky the lofty white peak of the “Lord of Heaven” tower, in the O Shira, or innermost castle. Then the full force of the storm struck us and wrapped us about in blinding, swirling torrents of rain. Yoritomo pressed up close to me, and bent over to make himself heard above the howls of the wind and the drumming splatter of the deluge.

“Be ready!” he warned. “Watch this street that runs in on the left where the vanguard is passing—There is one just beyond, on the right. At the moat gate is stationed a powerful guard. If the ronins fail to attack here—”

“Look!” I cried, grasping at my swordhilt.

Out of the narrow street on the left were streaming a number of cloaked figures, silent and downbent as though intent only upon making their way through the storm. As they filed out into the broad roadway alongside the norimon of the Princess, a gust of wind tore open the cloak of one in the rear and exposed to our gaze the bright links of chain armor within.

“The ronins!” hissed Yoritomo. “Wait! Make ready.”

I let go my half-drawn sword, and hastened to follow his example by tucking my robe skirts in the back of my girdle and tying up my long sleeves. In the midst I saw one of the hatamotos turn upon the nearest ronin with a repellent gesture. Instantly the assassin drew his sword and struck a fearful two-handed blow. The head of the luckless hatamoto leaped from his shoulders and fell after the blood-gushing corpse into the mud and water.

At the treacherous blow all the hatamotos who had seen it yelled with fury and amazement, and flashed out their swords to strike down the murderer. But their blades clashed without effect upon his hidden helmet and armor, and in an instant the other ronins were beside their chief, slashing back at the armorless hatamotos. Half a dozen guardsmen fell beneath the razor-edged blades, slain outright or hideously maimed, all in the brief moment before those in the van of the cortege could turn about and rush to their aid.

I found myself with drawn sword, struggling frantically to free myself from the grip of my friend. Though I was the stronger, he held me fast by some subtle trick of wrestlers’ art that, without injuring, rendered me as helpless as a child.

“Not yet!” he muttered, “not yet, brother!”

Unable to free myself, I was forced to stand and glare impotently through the whirling rain at the terrible massacre. At the beginning of the fight the hatamotos had numbered a fourth more than the assailants. Now they were already less than equal in number. With merciless swiftness, the ronins struck out in terrific blows that split heads to the chin and hewed off arms and legs and ripped open bodies with hideous slashes.

Vainly the brave hatamotos parried and slashed back at their foes with strokes no less powerful and often more skilful. For the most part, their blows served only to slice the false covering from the helmets of the ronins or nick the steel and brass under the masking cloaks. But every stroke of the ronin blades that reached its mark meant a ghastly wound.

Yet the hatamotos were not the only ones that fell in the bloody shambles. Twice I saw ronins go down under blows that split clean through their steel helmets; others were bitten deep by blades that slashed through the firmest chain mail; while more lost a foot or a hand from the lightning strokes of the Shogun’s swordsmen. But gloriously as the hatamotos fought, the ronins were no less brave and little less skilful, and the armor gave them an advantage impossible to overcome.

Never had I dreamt of such terrific fighting. In as many seconds a dozen of the guard were lying mutilated under the iron-shod sandals of the ronins. Every hatamoto near the norimon of the Princess and all but three or four of those in the rear were slain. One of the bearers of the rearmost norimon caught up a sword and struck out manfully. Back flashed a blow that split him to the middle. His fellow-bearers, who so far had stood as though paralyzed by fright, fled past us shrieking.

But not one of the proud hatamotos sought to escape. Shouting fierce imprecations, the last of the rearguard parried and struck, each as long as he could stand,—without giving back an inch before the merciless attack of their murderers. The six members of the vanguard still left, burst through the ring of ronins that was closing about them, and fought their way back towards the norimon of the Princess, whose bearers were being forced by threatening blades to swing about to the narrow side street.

“Now!” shouted Yoritomo, as the ronins again closed around the vanguard. He freed me and leaped away up the street, flourishing his sword and yelling, “Owari! Owari!”

I rushed after him, blood-mad with the sight of the fighting and slaughter, and utterly lost to all sense of danger in my fury at the ferocious treachery of the assassins.

“Avast!” I roared in English, “avast, you devils!”

For answer, the head of the last rear-guardsman came rolling towards us along the wet pavement. Close after it a pair of ronins sprang to meet and slash down the audacious priests. Out lunged Yoritomo’s sword, and the foremost murderer fell headlong, stabbed through the throat. The second slashed at my head. But the stroke glanced harmlessly down my parrying blade, and before the fellow could recover guard, I drove my point into one of his glaring eyes.

As my man fell across Yoritomo’s, three others came running at us with the ferocity of tigers. We sprang to meet them half-way. One, fortunately, was slightly outdistanced by his fellows. The swords of the two leaders clashed against ours in fierce, eager strokes. A blow, barely warded, struck off my hat and exposed fully to the gaze of my opponent my distended blue eyes. A look of horror flashed across his vengeful face. Doubtless he thought me a demon. For the barest fraction of a second he faltered—it was enough for me. Before his gaping mouth could snap shut, he fell to my lunge.

I wheeled to meet the third man, who, as Yoritomo parried with the second for an opening, had sprung around for a treacherous side slash. My outstretched blade met but failed to check entirely the blow, which fell across the back of Yoritomo’s right shoulder. Meeting my gaze, the ronin faltered as had his mate, and the result was as fatal to him. How seriously Yoritomo had been wounded I could not tell. I doubt if he was aware he had been struck. His lunge followed after mine, flash upon flash.

We darted forward, leaving five of the murderous band already accounted for. Four more were intent upon driving the bearers of Azai’s norimon on across into the side street. All the others were crowding around the few survivors of the vanguard in furious attack. Only supreme masters of Japanese swordcraft could have so long withstood the tremendous blows of the assassins throughout this atrocious massacre.

To fling ourselves into the midst of the deadly struggle was sheer madness—but it was a glorious madness. Having a moment’s start of my friend, I dashed ahead, past the rearmost norimon, from which the younger lady-in-waiting was frantically struggling to free herself. The norimon of the princess had been swung about, and its reluctant bearers were being forced into a trot by prodding dirks.

Shouting a command for the bearers to halt, I ran upon the ronins at the rear, who were directly before me. Until this moment they had been too intent upon driving the bearers to perceive us. The sight of their fallen comrades and the possibility of a check in their plans seemed to madden them. They rushed to meet me with a silent rage that flamed into wildest fury at sight of my tojin eyes.

“Demon! Kill! kill!” they yelled, and their strokes flashed out at me so swift and strong that I was beaten back a full two yards, and saved myself from the whistling blades only by the nimblest of footwork and parrying.

In a moment, though none too soon, Yoritomo sprang to my side and crippled one of the grinning fiends with a leg cut. This man must have been the leader of the band, for as he and his mate fell to our thrusts, the pair at the head of the norimon checked their charge upon us, and shouted loudly to their fellows.

Only three of the hatamotos now stood in the merciless circle of swords, and but one of their assailants had fallen. At the cry for help, the greater number of the ronins wheeled about and charged upon us, with the rain splashing upon their downbent helmet brims.

“Shoot!” gasped Yoritomo, bending over to lean upon his sword. “My arm weakens!—Shoot!”

Already my right hand was thrusting into my bosom. As I drew out one of the revolvers and cocked it, I stepped forward and to the left, that I might have the norimon between me and the charging ronins. At the same moment the young samurai woman from the rear norimon darted between the bearers and stood up across from me, facing the ronins, with upraised dirk. She could not have hoped to stop the ruffians for an instant, but she thought they meant to injure her mistress, and so was offering her own bosom first to the murderous blades.

The sight of such absolute courage and devotion steadied my twitching hand. I raised my revolver, and fired as rapidly as I could work hammer and trigger. The ronins were too close for me to miss even through the swirl of wind and rain. I risked no glancing of balls from mailed breasts, but aimed at the devilish faces below their broad helmet brims. To shoot wide of such large marks within a distance of ten paces and less would have been difficult, and a man shot from the front anywhere between mouth and brows never requires a second ball. Down went the foremost ronins, sprawling backwards in the flooded roadway, one at every shot.

To these mediæval warriors, acquainted only with antique matchlocks and Tower muskets, the mysterious appearance and rapid fire of my revolver must have been even more appalling than the death of their leaders. Before I could snatch out my second pistol, every man of them still on his feet fled towards the narrow cross street, shrieking that I was the daimio of demons. To aid their flight, I sent after them a leaden message that glanced from the helmet of the rearmost man, yet sent him staggering for a dozen yards.

CHAPTER XII—Escort to the Princess

A gust whirled the smoke of the shot into my face. As I paused with half-raised pistol, waiting for the puff to sweep aside, I heard the samurai lady calling cheerfully to her mistress, “My Princess! august lady! Fear nothing. The ronins have fled!”

I gazed about at the norimon. On the far side the brave girl was kneeling in her drenched silks, intent upon reassuring the occupant of the palanquin with word and smile. But the Princess had turned to the window on my side, and, heedless of the rain, was peering out at me through the parted bamboo curtain with even more awe and wonder in her dusky eyes than when she saw me in the temple.

My features, flushed and distorted as they were from the rage of battle and bloodshed, and fully exposed to view by the loss of my hat, must have appeared to her both outré and terrifying. Yet she was aware that I had helped to save her from the ronins. The samurai girl was exclaiming the fact through the other window. I bent toward her with a reassuring smile, but before I could speak, Yoritomo shouted to the bearers, “About, men! To the palace!”

The samurai girl sprang up as the willing bearers swung around over the bodies of the dead and wounded. The two hatamotos who alone had lived to witness the flight of the ronins came staggering to meet the litter, the blood of their many wounds dripping with the rain from their tattered coats. One of them I recognized as Yuki the captain. Past the wounded men darted the aged samurai woman of the foremost norimon, whose bearers had fled at the beginning of the attack, and who had only just contrived to squeeze from her narrow box.

I drew a deep breath, and stared around at the bloody scene through the lessening rain, in sudden bewilderment. To have witnessed the butchery of all those brave hatamotos, to have had so large a part in the defeat and rout of their murderers, to have met again the soft gaze of the Shogun’s daughter, all within little more than two minutes—small wonder I stood dazed! It was my first fight, the first time I had ever met and struck down men in mortal combat.

One of the wounded ronins had dragged himself a little aside and, crouched on knees and heels, was bending forward with the point of his dirk at his bared left loin. I caught at Yoritomo’s arm to point out the man, but before he could turn to look, the ronin had stabbed himself and was drawing the blade across his middle with a horrible deliberateness. After the cross stroke there followed an upward cut. The suicide swayed forward in silent agony, yet still had strength and resolution to draw out the blade and plunge it through his neck.

“Hara-kiri!” murmured Yoritomo, in a tone of deepest respect. “He has saved his family from disgrace and punishment. See! There are two others who would do the same.”

One had been enough for me. I turned, shuddering, to pick my way over the water-and-blood-soaked bodies of the dead, in the wake of the slowly advancing norimon. The rain-squall was blowing away as swiftly as it had dashed upon us.

With the passing of the last shower, a burst of golden light from the low western sun flooded over the roof of the yashiki on our left. At the same moment I heard the sound of rushing iron-shod feet. As I flung up my downbent head the sun-rays glittered on the wet silks and bared steel of a band of samurais that came charging out of the street on the right.

“Keiki!” cried Yoritomo, and clapping his hat upon my head, he darted forward to thrust a roll of writing through the window of the norimon, into the lap of the Princess.

With my second revolver held loose under the edge of my robe, I sprang after him to the side of the norimon, as the Mito men swarmed out and closed about the crippled cortege. The first glance had shown them the failure of their diabolical plot. Utterly disconcerted and bewildered by the defeat of the ronins, they ran about like wolves that have overshot the trail of their quarry. The two wounded hatamotos sought to wave them aside, but so many blocked the way that our party was forced to halt.

The thought flashed upon me that they might butcher every one of us except the Princess, and then claim all the credit of the rescue. This I am certain would have been the course of action of the more hot-blooded among them, had not the older men bethought themselves that they could not silence the Shogun’s daughter. To accomplish the object of their plot, they must bring her safe to her father.

In the midst of their flurry and confusion, a norimon came swaying around the corner of the side street at a most unlordly speed. Before it the excited samurais parted their ranks, and the bearers trotted across as if to range alongside the norimon of the Princess. Yoritomo sprang before them with barring sword.

“Stand!” he commanded.

The bearers halted at the word, but the samurais burst into angry yells, and turned to rush upon the audacious priest who had dared to oppose the advance of their lord. A glance around in search for some way of escape showed me the windows of the yashikis jammed with the heads of out-peering women and the main street full of running hatamotos and samurais. My pistol shots had been heard above the uproar of the squall.

Regardless of the swiftly gathering crowd, Keiki’s men pressed upon Yoritomo, with upraised swords. I drew my revolver and stepped forward beside him, certain that the end had come. I could not hope to overawe so large a band with a few shots. Without doubt we would have been overwhelmed and cut down within the next quarter-minute, had not their master called upon our menacing opponents to fall back.

The bearers of the black norimon set down their burden, and the nearest samurais sprang to remove the top. The silk-clad aristocrat who arose from the depths of the box-like palanquin was younger and even handsomer than Yoritomo, but his eyes, between their excessively narrow lids, had a shiftiness that reminded me of the treacherous Malays.

Yoritomo bowed low to him in mock politeness.

“Ten thousand years to the heir of Hitotsubashi!” he said. “Had Keiki Sama come sooner, he might have aided the progress of the Shogun’s daughter, instead of blocking the passage of the august lady.”

“Seize that false priest!” commanded Keiki, stung beyond self-control.

But before the eager samurais could spring in upon him, Yoritomo flung the priest robe from his shoulders, and exposed to view the Tokugawa crests upon his silk haori. Angry as were the Mito men, they stopped short at that insignia of the ruling family.

Again Yoritomo bowed to Keiki and spoke with biting sarcasm: “The son of Owari dono greets the son of Mito dono. It may be possible that Keiki Sama is disappointed at having arrived too late to share in the slaying of certain ronins. Wounds have been received by those who defended the august lady, but if the heir of Hitotsubashi will condescend to soil his honorable feet, proposal is made that he exhibit his wide-famed skill as a swordsman.”

For a moment I feared that the fiery young lord would snap at the ironical challenge. He flushed a dusky red beneath his olive skin and glared at my friend with a malignancy that caused me to raise and aim my revolver with an instinctive movement such as might have followed the sudden uprearing of a venomous snake. Had Keiki so much as signed to his retainers, he himself would have been the first to die. But a gray-bearded counsellor was murmuring quick words into the ear of his master. Keiki’s hate-distorted features relaxed to the blank, inscrutable calmness of Yoritomo’s.

“The heir of Hitotsubashi does not pollute himself by crossing swords with common street brawlers,” he answered.

Yoritomo smiled suavely. “Keiki Sama need not fear to pollute his sword. Such of the brawlers as have not fled are all slain. Fortunate is the evil-doer who dies beneath another’s sword or finds opportunity to commit hara-kiri. The stern torturers rack the limbs of criminals until they confess all the foul plans of themselves and their accomplices.”

Unable to face my friend’s challenging glance, Keiki turned to the wounded captain of Azai’s guard. “Yuki,” he called, “lead on again! My cortege is at the service of the Shogun’s daughter, to escort her safe to the inner castle.”

The younger samurai lady, who had knelt beside the norimon of the Princess, whispered across to the older lady. She in turn bowed and whispered to Yuki. Though tottering from his wounds, the hatamoto captain straightened and replied to Keiki in a tone of haughty command: “Stand aside with your men, lord. The daughter of the Tycoon is satisfied with the escort of the two priest-clad champions who, single-handed, destroyed the evil ronins.”

At this the newly arrived hatamotos came shouldering their way in among the Mito men with scant ceremony, and Keiki hastened to give the signal for his retainers to fall back. Again the bearers of the Princess started forward, with the two wounded hatamotos in the lead, each supported between a pair of his fellow-retainers. The others stationed themselves behind, to act as rearguard. Yoritomo sheathed his sword, and placed himself before the old samurai lady, on the right side of the norimon. Following his example, I thrust my sword and revolver inside my robe, and stationed myself on the left of the norimon, in front of the samurai girl.

As we advanced through the crowd of curious onlookers, I glanced about at the baffled Mito men, who were attempting to “save the face” of their lord by forming about his norimon in the usual stately cortege. Chancing to catch the eager gaze of the samurai girl, I smiled and nodded. Encouraged by my condescension to venture a like breach of etiquette, she bowed low, and murmured, with a soft laugh: “August lord! pardon the rudeness of Setsu!”

“O Setsu San is free to speak,” I said.

“Ten thousand years of happy life to my lord!” she murmured. “Again pardon the inexcusable rudeness,—but the awesome face of my lord has been seen by august eyes. Should report be made that my lord is to be numbered among the kami?—or is he a tojin sama?”

“A daimio of the tojin, come to aid Dai Nippon with sword and counsel,” I answered.

She bowed low, with a gentle insucking of breath, and fell silent. But as I sauntered along beside the slowly moving norimon, I caught glimpses of a pair of soft black eyes peering at me through the fringe of the window curtain. There could be no doubt that the Shogun’s daughter was studying such of my face as showed below the hat brim. The thought that she might be seeking to accustom herself to the “demon” eyes of the tojin set me aglow with blissful anticipations. But my amorous fancies quickly gave place to hot shame at the remembrance that the gentle little princess was the betrothed of my friend.

Our slow advance at last brought us up on the causeway, across the lake-like moat from the cyclopean wall and gate. The passage had been made through the midst of a multitude, drawn in rapidly increasing numbers by wild rumors of the fight. The causeway swarmed with hundreds of samurais, who stared at Yoritomo and myself in respectful silence.

A company of the hatamotos in charge of the great gate had advanced across the bridge to meet the Princess. Near the foot of the bridge Yoritomo signed me to stop. We stepped back while the norimon and those who followed it passed on between.

A venerable samurai wearing the circled cross of Satsuma saluted Yoritomo and pointed westward to the gate of one of the nearer yashikis.

“Shimadzu Satsuma-no-kami sends greeting to Yoritomo Sama, the heroic son of Owari dono, and to his heroic companion!” he said. “Will they honor the house of Shimadzu by entering and refreshing themselves?”

“Return our greetings and thanks to the Daimio of Satsuma,” replied Yoritomo. “We hope soon to visit Shimadzu Sama, but now we have come from a long journey, and must hasten to salute my father.”

“The son of Owari dono is wounded,” suggested the samurai.

“A wound received in a good cause bears no sting,” replied my friend with a Confucian sententiousness that drew an appreciative murmur from the crowd. He waved aside the old samurai with a courteous gesture, and crossed to me. “Come, brother, we must be on our way. The sun is low, and we have no lanterns.”

The samurai again hastened around before him and bent low. “Fearing that Yoritomo Sama might be unable to linger for a call, my lord took the liberty to send norimons for the conveyance of the son of Owari dono and his companion.”

“The gracious offer of Shimadzu, the Daimio of Satsuma, is accepted with grateful thanks,” responded Yoritomo.

At a sign from the samurai, two red-lacquered norimons were borne forward through the crowd, and their doors opened for us to enter. Calling to mind Yoritomo’s instructions I slipped off my sandals and squeezed into one of the narrow boxes. Once inside, I crouched down on knees and heels in quite the correct manner, though I caught a murmur of politely smothered surprise at my failure to remove my hat.

A half-minute later our palanquins were swinging westward along the walled edge of the moat, an escort of Satsuma samurais in van and rear, and the old leader in attendance beside Yoritomo’s norimon.

CHAPTER XIII—The Prince of Owari

Our trip through the daimio quarter must have covered two miles and more. Though closely cramped in my elegant box, I managed by stooping over to peer out through the bamboo fringe of the windows. For some time we had on our left the walls of large yashikis and on our right the beautiful lotus-covered moat-lake, with the lofty rampart of the citadel across. The sun sank beneath the horizon as we turned westward down a wide thoroughfare.

Presently we turned again, and passed zigzag from one street to another between silent yashikis. The buildings were lighted only by quaint street lanterns hung beside their heavy gateways and by the dim glow of candles through the white paper screens of the windows. The few people passing along these aristocratic streets were provided against the gathering darkness by cylindrical lanterns marked with the crests of various daimios.

At last we came to one of the bastioned gateways of the outer moat, and, after a brief parley with the guard, passed through and out across the bridge. Shortly beyond, our escort halted before a grand double-roofed gateway. We had arrived at the main entrance to the largest of the yashikis belonging to the Prince of Owari.

While our bearers carried us across the stone bridge of the moat-ditch into the lighted space before the huge copper-faced gates, the old samurai leader announced us to the warden or captain of the gate. Almost instantly the ponderous leaves of the gate swung open before us, and a dozen Owari samurais hastened out to open the norimons and salute their occupants.

Yoritomo met their smiles and kowtowings and noisy insuckings of breath with an austere dignity that I took pains to imitate. But to my surprise, he accepted a pair of the lacquered clogs that were brought for us, and proceeded to leave his norimon. Catching my look, he explained in English: “I am yet to be made heir, and as a younger son I lack the rank required of one permitted to ride in through the gateway.”

“Your rank is known,” I replied. “Mine is yet to be established. I will make a start here and now. You know that in my country there is no man of better blood than myself. I will not enter your father’s gateway except in my norimon.”

“You are right. The point is shrewdly taken,” he assented, and he spoke gravely to the gate warden.

The retainer accepted the statement of his master’s son without a trace of hesitancy, and I was carried in beneath the carved and lacquered crossbeams of the gateway with Yoritomo walking beside my norimon. The iron-shod sandals of samurais and bearers clattered on the stone flags of the broad courtyard within the gate.

Crossing this court, we passed up a slope and through an ornamental fence, into a second court before the mansion of the prince. Wings and high hedges flanked the main building in such manner that we could have seen nothing of the yashiki gardens even had the day still lingered. I was, however, more than satisfied by the fairy-like vision of the palace. Though the building was of only one story, the white-tiled roof flung up its twisted gables against the blue-black sky with an effect of airy height, while the rows of lanterns, hung to the outcurving eaves, shed their soft glow over the artistic balustrades and polished planking of verandas wider than those of Zozoji.

In the centre of the façade was a grand portico of keyaki wood, supported by carved beams and pillars lacquered in vivid colors. Young pages came out to salute us and spread mats for us to step upon. I emerged from my norimon. Yoritomo returned our thanks to the old samurai for the courtesy of Satsuma, and stepped from his clogs onto the mats beside me as the bearers and escort turned back to the gate.

An elderly chamberlain in richest costume appeared from within and kowtowed before us. Mindful of my lessons in etiquette, I drew out my sheathed sword and handed it to the official as he rose. He took the priceless weapon reverently and raised it to his forehead before giving it into the keeping of one of the pages. Yoritomo handed his own sword to a second page, and addressed the chamberlain curtly: “Let my august father be informed of our arrival, Fujimaro.”

“By what name shall I announce my lord’s companion?” asked the chamberlain.

“Announce my friend as one entitled to sit at the left hand of the Prince of Owari.”

Fujimaro bowed us into the keeping of a second chamberlain, and slipped noiselessly away over the white mats. The newcomer kowtowed, and, at a word from Yoritomo, conducted us in through a vestibule lined with halberds, lances, archers’ equipage, armor, and battle-axes, to a dim-lit passage. The pages with our swords followed at a respectful distance.

Two or three turns brought us to the brightly illuminated dressing-room of a bath. As we entered several attendants saluted and began waiting on us, rising from their knees only when necessary. When my hat was removed, one man gave a gasp of amazement. Otherwise all preserved their bland smiles throughout my disrobing, too well trained to venture any comments upon my “snow white” skin.

But etiquette did not prevent them from uttering soft exclamations of grief and pity when the removal of Yoritomo’s dress disclosed a deep cut across his shoulder blade. Though no longer bleeding, the wound gaped open to the bone. Yet with Spartan fortitude Yoritomo silenced their cries and ordered them to proceed with me. When, in turn, he had received his cold rub and hot immersion, he at last permitted the chamberlain to bind up the wound with moistened strips of the tough Japanese paper.

Blind shampooers reinvigorated our muscles with their skilful rubbing; other attendants shaved us, dressed our hair, and attired us in gorgeous ceremonial costume, including white silk socks and the gauze-winged jackets called kamishimos. Last of all our dirks were thrust into our girdles and my revolvers and cartridges placed on a red lacquer tray to be carried after us with our swords.

Fujimaro appeared to conduct us into the presence of the Prince. We followed him through well-lighted corridors, flanked by rooms varying in size but all alike in their silk-bordered mats, the beautiful pictures on their lacquer-rimmed wall-screens, and the artistic fretwork in the space between the lintel-beams and the ceiling. Throughout the palace the woodwork was in natural finish, without paint or varnish, yet polished until the exquisitely grained surface shimmered like watered silk.

At the anteroom of the daimio’s hall of audience two more chamberlains kowtowed and ushered us forward. At the head of the room there was an impressive pause. The chamberlains could not have looked more solemn had they been ushering us into the presence of the Shogun himself. The screens before us drew noiselessly aside and disclosed a chamber somewhat larger than the anteroom and a slight step higher.

The chamberlains kowtowed at the threshold and crept forward on their knees. We followed, erect. To our left, midway up the room, knelt six dignified samurai counsellors. The Daimio awaited us, seated Turk fashion upon a low dais before a lacquer-walled tokonoma. So far as I could judge of his figure within the loose robes, he was tall and slender. He wore a small beard and mustache whose snowy whiteness contrasted with his tall black bag-like cap of cobwebby tissue. His long face had a stern and saturnine expression and he bore himself with austere stateliness.

As the chamberlains neared the dais, they kowtowed and drew to one side. We advanced and knelt, and Yoritomo kowtowed. Resolved to maintain equality with the Prince, I went no further than a low bow. As I straightened, the Prince gazed keenly into my blue eyes, and after a moment’s pause returned my bow. I was received as a daimio of the first class!

The kneeling chamberlains waved me to the cushion on the left of the Prince and Yoritomo to the cushion on his right. Our swordbearers slid around to the tokonoma and placed our swords upon the rack of honor below the Prince’s glittering gold-mounted helmet and armor. At a sign from the Prince, the page bearing my revolvers and cartridges set his tray before us.

The solemn silence which had prevailed since our entrance continued while attendants glided in with sweetmeats and a toy-like tea service of egg-shell china. When we had been served, the Daimio signed all the retainers except his counsellors to withdraw, and broke the silence by politely inquiring my name, age, and family.

“My father’s guest is Adamisu Woroto Sama,” answered Yoritomo for me. “He is a daimio of the great tojin people whose land is called America. His age is the same as my own. In all America there is no family of higher blood than the family of my friend and benefactor. He held honorable rank under the Government of America, but laid aside office, and has come with me to aid Dai Nippon.”

The Prince looked across to the group of counsellors, and the aged karo, or chief counsellor, responded to the wordless inquiry without moving.

“My lord, in the Legacy of Iyeyasu it is forbidden to harbor a tojin. According to the ancient edict, all Christians shall be imprisoned in the common jail.”

“August Prince and father,” said Yoritomo, “the Legacy of Iyeyasu also forbids that any man shall leave the shores of Nippon, under penalty of crucifixion. Your son has travelled beyond the shores of Nippon; he has traversed the five continents, and proved the truth of the Dutch learning by sailing around the vast circuit of the world.”

“My lord,” said the karo, “the wording of the edict is explicit. Death is decreed against whomsoever shall presume to intercede for the life of a man returned from beyond the seas. Men of low class—fishermen—have been received back from tojin ships and forgiven their unintended crime. But according to his own words, Yoritomo Sama left the shore of Nippon with intent to contravene the ancient edict by bringing back the knowledge of the tojins. My lord, the enforcement of the laws has been lax in recent years; there has been much blinking at the study of the Dutch learning. Yet the laws stand ready for enforcement against my lord and Yoritomo Sama and the honorable guest, should enemies of my lord make demand upon Midzuano Echizen-no-kami, chief of the Elder Council.”

“A petition for a hearing has already gone to the Household in the norimon of the Princess Azai,” replied Yoritomo, and without naming Kohana, he told succinctly how we had discovered and defeated the Mito plot.

The Daimio and his counsellors listened throughout with an impassiveness of manner which I should have mistaken for indifference had I not been near enough to see the glow in the jet eyes of the Prince. At the end of the account the great man murmured his comments in a voice that vibrated with suppressed exultance:

“In all that you have done, my son, I see the guidance of the gods and of the spirits of our forefathers. The Mito men walk with faces over their shoulders, looking to the past, and with ears closed against all reports of the disasters brought upon the Chinese by a like frog-in-the-well policy. The true cause of the Mikado owes much to your service and the service of this noble tojin sama.”

“I have broken the law; I have brought danger upon the House of Owari,” said Yoritomo. “I alone should receive punishment, and not my family. Shall it be hara-kiri, or shall I strip off the Tokugawa crest, and as a ronin seek to accomplish my mission, aided only by my tojin brother?”

His father looked across at the counsellors, and the old karo responded without a moment’s hesitancy: “Yoritomo Sama has in truth been guided by the ancestral spirits of Owari. Chief and clan should stand or fall in the support of the heir of Owari.”

“Heir?” murmured Yoritomo. “Such, then, is the truth!”

“Trusted men have been making secret search for you throughout Nippon,” answered the Prince. “For a month your elder brother has lain sick beyond hope of recovery. His son is yet a child. The strong man has come to succeed the sick heir. To-morrow the death of your brother will be announced.”

To give way to grief in the presence of a superior is a most serious breach of Japanese etiquette. The graver the grief or pain, the more pronounced the smile of the sufferer. Yoritomo uttered a soft laugh, and immediately turned the conversation to a less painful subject.

“My lord,” he said, “I have told how Woroto Sama received me aboard the black ship, and how he proved himself the generous friend and brother of the stranger. We believe the saying that the spirits of our ancestors are ever about us. Here is proof. Only a day past Woroto Sama informed me that he is a descendant of Anjin Sama.”

“Of Anjin Sama!” repeated the Prince, even his austere reserve shaken by the statement.

I bowed to mask my curiosity. The news of my ancestry could not be other than interesting to any one acquainted with the romantic history of Will Adams. But why should the announcement to this Oriental prince create such a sensation?

He looked at me with a slight smile, and asked his son: “Does Woroto Sama know?”

“He has yet to be informed, my lord.”

The Prince turned to his karo: “What is written in the records of Owari regarding Anjin Sama, the tojin counsellor of Minamoto Iyeyasu?”

“My lord, it is written that the fourth Daimio of Owari took to wife the daughter of Satsuma-no-kami’s brother Nagato. The wife of Nagato was the daughter of Anjin Sama’s grandson.”

The saturnine face of the Prince relaxed in a kindly smile, and Yoritomo bowed to me in grave salute. “My brother now sees that it was immutable Fate which drew us together in the bonds of friendship. We are blood kinsmen.”

Accustomed as are we of the South to trace out the ties of family through all its ramifications, I was astonished at this recognition of cousinship through so remote an ancestor, especially as I knew the Japanese hold strictly to the male line. But if the princely House of Owari was inclined to receive me as a member of the clan and family, it was not for me to repudiate the connection.

The Daimio spoke to the counsellors: “The heir of the Prince of Owari is entitled to present his memorial direct to the Shogun. See that Yoritomo Sama is registered at Zozoji, in the place of his elder brother, who is about to go from us.”

The counsellors kowtowed, and glided from the room. Yoritomo addressed his father, with a shade of anxiety beneath his smile: “My lord, I cannot go before the Shogun during my time of mourning. Yet the black ships may come any day.”

“Prepare the memorial. I myself will present it to the Shogun in private audience,” replied the Prince.

One of the screens of the side wall slipped open, and there entered a slender little old lady in dove-colored silk. She was the first aged woman I had yet seen in Japan whose features retained a share of youthful beauty. Her face was as exquisitely refined and almost as fair as that of the Shogun’s daughter, while her teeth, owing either to greater skill in the application or to better dye, were of a glossy black not altogether unpleasing even to my Occidental ideas of attractiveness.

Softly as a thistledown, she drifted across the mats and knelt before Yoritomo, her lips parted in a smile that went far beyond the demands of etiquette. Tears of joy glided down her soft cheeks, and in her eyes was a look of mother love and devotion that made all clear to me. No less deep and overpowering was Yoritomo’s joy at sight of his mother; his tears flowed quite as freely. Yet there followed no outburst of caressing words, no kisses and fond embraces. Weeping and smiling in decorous quiet, they kowtowed to one another and murmured formal words of greeting.

In the midst Yoritomo composed himself to introduce me as his friend and benefactor and a distant kinsman of the family. She welcomed me with exquisite courtesy. A samurai girl appeared with a light refreshment of tea, and rice-cakes covered with a sauce of red beans and sugar. This the Princess served to us herself, with a daintiness that would have drawn from me more than one compliment had I not been aware that my fine phrases would have been considered an outrageous breach of etiquette.

When the little lady had withdrawn with her assistant, the Prince unbent entirely from his austere reserve, and in a most genial manner showered upon me a hundred and one politely personal inquiries as to my opinions and ideas. Behind the mask of solemn state I found him a gentleman as cordial as he was dignified, and as kindly disposed as he was noble minded.

Returning to the fight with the ronins, he spoke wonderingly of my audacious resort to firearms within the bounds of Yedo, and insisted that I should show him the action of my revolvers. The weapons greatly pleased him, and he obtained my promise to fire them the next day in one of the archery walks of the yashiki.

After this, mindful of our need of rest, he touched a small gong, and ordered the chamberlain Fujimaro, who responded, to conduct me to apartments occupying one of the wings of the palace.

CHAPTER XIV—Before the Shogun

For several days I lived in strict seclusion. A semi-detached wing of the palace, surrounded by one of the most beautiful of the landscape gardens within the yashiki, had been set apart for my use. All my wants were attended to by a faultlessly polite corps of retainers and servants.

Fujimaro the chamberlain acted as my major-domo and incidentally as my instructor in language and etiquette. Much as I had derived both consciously and unconsciously from my intimacy with Yoritomo, I soon found that I had made no more than a fair beginning in the intricacies and niceties of one of the most difficult of languages and of the most complicated of all existing codes of etiquette, that of China not excepted.

My teacher proved to be invariably cordial and interested, but no less invariably formal and precise in his demeanor towards the tojin daimio. The Prince, who came to walk with me in the garden each day, was still more formal whenever any of his retainers were present. At other times, as when I showed him a little pistol practice in the seclusion of a rockery, he unbent to me as to a peer, always faultlessly polite and dignified yet flatteringly attentive to my conversation.

During this time I saw nothing of his wife, the quaintly beautiful little lady Tokiwa Sama. The family life of the Japanese nobility is extremely private, even as regards relatives. Yoritomo found time to pay me only one brief visit. He was dressed in white, the Japanese mourning, and was greatly worn by his labor in preparing his memorial to the Shogun during the nights and his daytime duties as chief mourner for his brother.

Japanese etiquette does not permit the official mourning of parents for children. Upon Yoritomo had fallen the sorrowful task of receiving the family friends at the bier of his brother and of attending to all the Buddhistic and Shinto funeral rites. The day after our arrival the death of his brother had been officially announced, and the corpse, which had been embalmed in vermilion for a month past, was mourned over for the prescribed number of days before the interment in one of the cemeteries at Shiba.

In the meantime my friend had completed a summary of the knowledge he had acquired regarding the outer world, and the new foreign policy to which that knowledge pointed. He was now writing the full report and memorial, while his father, who had already smuggled the summary into the Castle, was intriguing for permission to present the memorial direct to the Shogun, unknown to Midzuano and the other members of the Council of Elders.

As the Council was secretly pledged to the Mito faction, it was necessary for us to obtain an unprejudiced hearing from the Shogun. Delay was dangerous, since at any moment Keiki might invoke the ancient laws against us, or the inopportune arrival of the American expedition might checkmate our purpose by throwing the Government into an irrevocably hostile attitude towards the foreigners and ourselves.

Weary of inaction, I welcomed a message from the Prince requesting me to join him on an informal visit. Where we were to go was not stated, but I accepted the invitation on the instant, and asked no questions. My attendants dressed me with utmost care, in rich though sober-colored garments, and I noticed that a ceremonial winged jacket, or kamishimo, of hemp-cloth was laid in a lacquered case to be carried along.

When, shortly after midday, I was led through the palace to the state portico, I found that the Prince had already entered his norimon, and was being borne away in the midst of his slow-moving cortege. I stepped into my norimon and was borne after him, Fujimaro and other officials walking beside me. My led-horse and grooms, my two-sword men, and the bearers of my state umbrella, hat, fan, and all the other ceremonial paraphernalia of a daimio, were strung out before or behind me.

Upon issuing from the yashiki, we did not cross the outer moat at the nearest bridge, but skirted southward along it to the Yotsuya Gate, which opens into the great Kojimachi Street. Up Kojimachi we swung at a pace far brisker than dignity would have permitted had not the absence of ceremonial standards indicated that we were travelling naibun. The incognito of the Prince, however, was no more than a conventional fiction, since his cortege was immediately recognized by every man in the throngs of samurais that passed us within the official quarter.

Gazing out through my curtains, I caught the politely veiled glances with which the two-sword men regarded our cortege. The intensity of party feeling among them was evident from the total absence of indifference. There was not one who failed to show indications of either warm friendship or bitter hatred. This was no less true of the helmetted riders we met. Some rode by with the heads of their barbed and grotesquely caparisoned horses curved high and the huge slipper stirrups of the high-peaked saddles thrust out aggressively. Others courteously swerved to the far side of the street, and a few even dismounted, despite our conventional incognito.

A mile along the Kojimachi Street brought us to the moat of the citadel. I expected our cortege to turn to the right into the great causeway and skirt the moat towards the Sakaruda Gate where Yoritomo and I had parted from the cortege of the Princess Azai. Instead, our escort led straight on across the bridge that headed the street. The thought flashed upon me that we were about to enter the Shogun’s sacred enclosure and call upon one of the high officials of the Household.

On either side I looked down over the waters of the beautiful moat, among whose blue-green lotus pads swarmed ducks and geese, swans, ibises, storks, and cranes. The outer bank rose to the causeway in a steep grassy slope, set with wide-spreading oaks and pines. Nearing the far side, I studied at close view the granite blocks of the citadel wall, many of which measured at least four feet by sixteen. They were neatly fitted together without mortar or iron cramps, and showed no crevices or displacements from the earthquakes of three centuries.

At the head of the bridge our cortege halted, and Fujimaro informed me that I was to alight. The Prince, as the head of one of the August Three Families, was entitled to ride in through this lesser gate, but no other daimio could be accorded the privilege.

“Very well,” I replied, determined to make a test of the matter. “Let the Prince of Owari proceed. I will wait his return here.”

“Impossible, my lord!” exclaimed the chamberlain.

“Then take me back to the yashiki,” I demanded. “The Prince was pleased to receive me as a daimio of rank equal to his own. I will enter the citadel in the same manner that he enters, or not at all.”

This was a bold stand for a foreigner whose very presence in Japan was against the ancient laws. But my natural disposition to insist upon a correct valuation of my dignity was backed by a careful consideration of Japanese manners and customs. As an American gentleman, I had the right to rank myself as an equal to any one beneath the ruler of the country. To accept a lower station would result in humiliations that I was not disposed to suffer, either from white men or brown.

There followed a prolonged conference between the captain of the gate, the chamberlain, and the Prince, during which Fujimaro twice came back and begged me to change my determination. I refused. The gate captain in turn refused to admit the unknown occupant of the second norimon other than on foot. The deadlock that followed was broken by the appearance of a hatamoto whom I at once recognized as the only member of the Princess’s guard, except the leader, that had survived the attack of the ronins. His dress indicated that he had been promoted to the rank of court chamberlain. He had come to conduct us into the citadel, and at a word from him, the obstinate gate captain yielded his will to mine.

We moved forward beneath the huge ancient gateway into a small court between the lofty bastions, and out at right angles, through an inner gateway, into the marvellously beautiful gardens of the Shogun. After winding about for half a mile or more among hillocks and rockeries and groves interspersed with kiosks and toy-like red-lacquered temples, we came to the wall and moat that surrounds the O Shiro.

Here the Prince and I left our norimons, and walked over a slender high-arched bridge, accompanied only by our chamberlains and the newly made court chamberlain, who had ostentatiously ushered us from the citadel gate. In compliance with the request of the Prince, I walked behind him as if lost in meditation, my head downbent and eyes narrowed to a line.

At the far side of the bridge we passed between the vigilant guards of the inner gateway, who, however, seemed to detect nothing foreign in my appearance. Beyond them we came into a garden court, surrounded with high walls on three sides and on the fourth with a wing of the palace. There was no person to be seen either in the court or in the broad veranda of the palace wing, to which we were conducted. Mounting a set of movable lacquered steps, we crossed the veranda to the threshold of a small waiting room.

When our clogs had been removed, the Prince handed over not only his sword but his dirk as well into the keeping of his chief attendant. The act convinced me that we were about to be received by the Shogun himself. It was absurd to suppose that one of so exalted a rank as the Prince would lay aside his dirk as well as his sword for any personage in Yedo other than the head of the Government. Fujimaro did not have to ask twice for my swords. I handed them over at the first word.

We entered and seated ourselves. The court chamberlain kowtowed and withdrew, and our attendants proceeded to slip on our winged jackets and adjust our court caps. These were odd black-lacquered affairs, not unlike inverted boats in shape, and were tied on the crown of our heads with cords passing under our chins. Our chamberlains then handed us the ceremonial fans, and withdrew to the lower end of the room.

After a short wait, the court official reappeared and bowed to the Prince and myself. We rose and followed him through a deserted corridor into a large square room, where he signed us to kneel on three mats below the cushions in front of the tokonoma. He slipped out again by the way he had entered, drawing shut the screen behind him.

There followed a wait of ten or fifteen minutes, during which I sought to quiet my apprehensions as to the outcome of the audience with this mysterious Oriental potentate, by studying the exquisite cabinetwork and decorations of the room. I was admiring the priceless cloisonné vase which shared the floor of the tokonoma with a common water-worn stone, when the Prince drew in his breath with a soft sibilation, and kowtowed until his forehead pressed the floor.

A quick glance showed me a gap between the screens of the side wall, through which was entering a portly, stern-faced, black-bearded man in yellow kimono and black haori. In his girdle were thrust a sword and dirk that glittered with gold fretwork, but the bell-shaped cap, or hat, on the crown of his head was of plain black lacquer. The salute of the Prince was, however, quite sufficient to convince me that we were in the presence of the Shogun. I kowtowed beside my companion.

We maintained our salute until the Shogun had seated himself on the cushioned dais before the tokonoma and commanded us to rise. As we straightened and sat back on knees and heels, I was astonished to perceive that we were alone with this exclusive and jealously guarded ruler of the most exclusive and jealously guarded empire on earth. But I had heard too much about the ways of Oriental potentates to doubt that palace guards waited within instant call behind the frail barrier of the wall screens.

“The petition of Yoritomo Sama for permission to present a memorial through Owari dono has been received and read,” he began in a clear, colorless voice. “The summary of the intended memorial of Yoritomo Sama has been received but not read. The Legacy of Iyeyasu forbids the reading of documents or letters that refer to tojin countries.”

“The will of Minamoto Iyeyoshi is the delight of his servants!” exclaimed the Prince, smiling as though he had received a favor. “May inquiry be made whether the Tycoon has laid the matter before the Elder Council?”

If the Shogun was flattered by the adulatory Chinese title, which properly belonged only to the Mikado, there was nothing to indicate the fact in his stern look. He replied curtly, “The Council has not yet been consulted.”

Though so ungraciously stated, I divined that this answer implied a point in our favor, and I smiled quite as suavely as the Prince. The Shogun turned his gloomy eyes upon me in a fixed stare. As a matter of courtesy I was willing to conform to the etiquette of the country, but I was not inclined to cringe before any man. No thought of insolence or bravado entered my mind. The rank of this Oriental ruler entitled him to my respect. I met his look with the calm and steady gaze with which a gentleman regards a new acquaintance.

The experiment was not lacking in danger. Deference is the breath of life to the normal Oriental potentate. But the pride of race and family is hard to overcome, even though expediency counsel a subservient attitude. I could not have humbled myself had I desired.

The event proved that Minamoto Iyeyoshi was far other than a typical tyrant. His dark eyes lighted and he expressed his opinion of me with royal conciseness: “The American tojin is brave.”

I bowed in acknowledgment. “Your Highness is pleased to be gracious! Permit me to speak for one who is my friend,—a man who, for the sake of his country, laid aside riches and rank, and, at the risk of life and honor, crossed the seas to search out the secrets of tojin power. Your Highness, do the records of Nippon’s heroes tell of any nobler deed of courage and devotion?”

“The Legacy of Iyeyasu may not be altered,” he replied.

“Your Highness,” I said, “since the days of your august ancestor Iyeyasu Sama, Dai Nippon has stood still among the nations of the earth while all the tojin world has rolled forward. Even China stirs from the sleep of cycles. The time has come for the people of Nippon to learn that the tojins are neither beasts nor demons nor even barbarians. Your Highness, the son of the wise Prince of Owari honored me with his friendship. For the sake of that friendship I have come with him to Nippon to advise the altering of the laws of Iyeyasu.”

“A tojin counsellor in the Shogunate!”

“Your Highness may recall one precedent,” I replied. “Iyeyasu Sama listened to the counsel of Anjin Sama, my ancestor.”

The curiosity in the Shogun’s eyes deepened without a trace of change in his impassive face. He glanced inquiringly at my companion, who responded in a tone of calm conviction: “Anjin Sama, the favorite and most trusted counsellor of our august ancestor, has returned in a new birth to advise Minamoto Iyeyoshi regarding the tojin peoples.”

“Does the tojin himself make claim that he is a reincarnation of Anjin?” demanded the Shogun.

“No claim is made by myself, Your Highness,” I answered. “I am not conscious that my soul is the soul of Anjin. But I know that I am lineally descended from Anjin through his English son, and Owari dono honors me with an acknowledgment of kinship.”

The Prince bowed in confirmation.

Iyeyoshi’s face darkened. “Woroto is a believer in the accursed sect!”

“Your Highness is mistaken,” I replied. “The sect denounced by your laws is that body of Christians which acknowledges the rule of the Pope of Rome. There are many Christian sects which reject the Pope.”

“All Christian sects seek to subvert filial piety and the reverent worship of the august ancestors, upon which rest the foundations of morality and order.”

“Your Highness,” I ventured, “whatever may be the foundations of order and morality, the life of nations depends either upon the power to meet force with force or the wisdom to avoid conflict. For generations Dai Nippon has been safe owing to her isolation from the lands beyond the wide seas. But now the tojin peoples have attained to a power inconceivable to one who has not seen. Their warships cover the seas.”

“So also did the war junks of Kublai Khan,” he rejoined.

“The fleet of Kublai Khan was destroyed off the shores of Nippon by the great storm no less than by the valor of Nippon’s samurais,” I replied. “But the warships of the tojins move without sails against the greatest of typhoons, and their cannon shoot far. Your Highness may have heard of Chinese arrogance. The tojins said, ‘Trade with us.’ The Chinese spat at them and called them ‘foreign devils.’ The tojins said, ‘Trade with us.’ They attacked the tojins. The tojin warships came to them in anger. Now they trade with the tojins in many open ports. The tojin trade is a rising tide that is sweeping its way around the world. Your Highness knows that the Government of my country is sending a very great official honorably to request that the ports of Dai Nippon be unblocked before the rising tide.”

“Earthquake waves have rolled up on our coasts, destroying thousands. The waters have ever receded, and Dai Nippon still stands.”

“The tide of tojin trade has never receded from wherever it has flowed. Tojin power is far beyond the knowledge of Your Highness. Do not judge by the Dutch. They are now a very little people in the tojin world. In the august name of Minamoto Iyeyasu and in the name of Anjin Sama, his counsellor, I ask Minamoto Iyeyoshi to receive and ponder on the memorial of Yoritomo Sama.”

“The prayer of Woroto will be considered,” replied the Shogun, and with this half concession, he touched a small gong that stood beside him on an elbow rest.

CHAPTER XV—Requital

In quick response to the signal, the chamberlain who had conducted us to the palace entered at the side of the room. Over his feet and a yard behind trailed a grotesque prolongation of his trouser legs that gave him the appearance of walking on his knees. I supposed he had been summoned to usher us out. But when he crept forward on hands and knees and kowtowed, the Shogun commanded harshly: “Look at the tojin, Gengo. Report has been made that he committed the crime of firing a gun within the bounds of Yedo. Speak the truth.”

The chamberlain raised his head a little above the floor, and stared across at me, his face gray with fear beneath its set smile.

“Your Highness,” he murmured, “the truth cannot be concealed. This is the tojin who, in company with Yoritomo, son of Owari dono, fired many shots from a little gun the like of which has never before been seen in Yedo. Your Highness knows that I had no share in the crime. Yuki was captain of the cortege, and the responsibility—”

“Enough,” interrupted the Shogun. “Send in Setsu.”

As the fellow crept from the room I stared after him, astounded that fear could so debase one who had outmatched by his skill and braveness the armored ronins. He had stood unflinching before the bloody swords that had cut down his comrades, yet now, at the bare intimation that his lord was displeased with me, crawled away without venturing a word in favor of the tojin whose so-called crime had saved him from death and his Princess from the disgrace of capture.

I turned to the Prince, expecting him to burst into warm protests against the injustice of the Shogun’s attitude. He sat in placid silence, his face wreathed in the polite smile of the Japanese courtier. Yet I knew that he could not be indifferent. Ruin to me would spell ruin to Yoritomo. Determined not to be outdone in self-control, I composed myself, and faced the Shogun with the same forced smile of etiquette.

Iyeyoshi regarded me with an inscrutable look. Though his features were as impassive as if cast in golden bronze, I fancied a sinister mockery behind the cold curiosity of his gaze. I felt as a mouse must feel between the paws of the cat. I had been so foolish as to leave my revolvers in my apartments. I was absolutely in the power of this gloomy-eyed ruler. I thought of all the hideous mediæval tortures still in practice in this benighted land, and a cold sweat oozed out upon my skin and chilled me. Yet I maintained my courtier’s smile.

Noiselessly as a shadow a girl glided across the room and prostrated herself before the Shogun. It was the younger of the Princess Azai’s samurai ladies. Iyeyoshi muttered a command. She raised her head a few inches, and spoke rapidly, but in tones so soft and low I could only conjecture that she was giving a detailed account of the attack and defeat of the ronins. Throughout the recital the Shogun held to his cold scrutiny of my face. I continued to smile.

At the end he signed her to go. In turning about, she cast at me a glance of modest interest, and I thought there was friendliness in her smile. She glided out as noiselessly as she had entered. There was a moment’s pause, and another girl glided in to prostrate herself before the Shogun,—a girl still more graceful and lissome, dressed in crepes of gossamer texture. I stared in amazement, my heart skipping a beat and then bounding with a force that sent a flood of color into my face. The girl was the Shogun’s daughter, the Princess Azai.

“Speak the full truth!” commanded the Shogun, with the barest suggestion of tenderness beneath his stern tone. “This is not the first time you have seen the tojin.”

“Your Highness,” she murmured, in a voice as clear and musical as it was low, “the tojin sama appeared before me first below the holy image of Kwannon at Zozoji. I thought him a god or a spirit. Again he appeared, in the midst of the attack by the evil ronins, and then I knew him to be a hero such as are told of in the ancient writings.”

“The privilege of rulers is to honor heroes,” said the Shogun, and he made a sign with his fan.

Azai glided to the opening in the screens, and returned with a tea tray of unvarnished cypress wood, which she held above her white brow until she had knelt to set it before her father. Having served him, she glided across again, to return with a tray and service of vermilion lacquer. This she brought to the Prince, holding it not so high as the first tray. Last of all she came to serve me in precisely the same manner as my fellow-guest. Tray and service and ceremonial were identical. In other words, I was received by the Shogun as a personage of rank equal to that of the Prince of Owari.

But I gave scant thought to this triumph of diplomacy when I looked down upon the quaint coiffure and slender figure of the kowtowing girl. As she straightened from the salute and, still upon her knees, bent forward to offer me my tea and sweetmeats, her eyes rose to mine in a timid glance. By good fortune I was able to restrain my tongue. But I could not withhold from my gaze the adoration which overwhelmed me at this close view of her exquisite purity and loveliness.

I had barely a glimpse of the soft brown-black eyes, purpling with emotion. Then the lids drooped their long lashes, and a scarlet blush leaped into her ivory cheeks. Yet with consummate grace and composure, she maintained her delicious little smile of greeting, and served me without a falter.

Her blush passed as swiftly as it had come, but it left me stunned and dizzy with the realization that I loved this divinely sweet and innocent maiden,—the daughter of the proud ruler of Nippon,—the promised bride of my true friend Tomo. She was as far beyond my reach as the silvery moon. What of that? Love does not reason. Even in the midst of my shame at the thought of my friend, I found myself unable to resist the mad longing to win the lovely girl.

My infatuated gaze could not have escaped the keen eyes of her father and the Prince. To my surprise, instead of reproving me with word or look, they sipped their tiny cups of tea as fast as the little Princess could refill them, and exchanged cryptic verses from the Chinese classics. The poetic contest continued until we had finished our refreshment and Azai had withdrawn with her trays.

The Shogun quoted a last verse, and turned upon me with pedagogical severity. “Woroto gives no heed to the golden words of the Chinese sage!”

“Your Highness,” I replied, “if ignorance of Confucius is the sole test, regard me as a barbarian. Less than two years have passed since I began the study of your language with Yoritomo Sama.”

“In the matter of tojin learning, Woroto Sama is a scholar,” interposed the Prince.

“And a true samurai in battle,” added the Shogun with a graciousness that, I must confess, relieved me not a little.

“Your Highness,” I asked, “if inquiry is admissible—there were two hatamotos who lived to see the flight of the ronins. Both fought with utmost skill and courage.”

“Gengo, as you have seen, has been promoted,” answered the Shogun. “He did all that his position called for. Yuki, as captain of the cortege, was guilty of falling into an ambush. In consideration of his loyal valor, his life has been mercifully spared, and his punishment limited to degradation from the service of the Shogunate.”

Only with utmost difficulty could I maintain my set smile. Here was bitter requital for service,—the loyal and courageous hatamoto made a ronin and beggared because of a surprise which he had no shadow of reason to anticipate.

“Rumor says that one of the traitors was taken alive,” remarked the Prince. “Is permission given to inquire?”

“The criminal refused to speak, and so died under examination.”

A shudder passed through me at the terse reply. I called to mind what I had read of rack and boot and fire and all the other hideous tortures of mediæval court procedure.

The Prince must have been bitterly disappointed. He laughed softly, and ventured another inquiry: “It is rumored that the band came from the north.”

“They were ronins, formerly in the service of Mito,” replied the Shogun. “Written declarations found upon their bodies state that they had foresworn their loyalty to their lord, and intended to strike a blow against the Shogunate in favor of the temporal power of the Mikado.”

“In Tenno’s name, for Mito’s fame,” rhymed the Prince.

The verse was not improbably a paraphrase of a classic couplet and must have contained an allusion beyond the bare meaning of the words. Iyeyoshi’s face darkened with a double suspicion.

“Eleven years have passed since the Prince of Mito was compelled to resign his daimiate to his eldest son and confine himself in his inferior Yedo yashiki,” he stated. “Rekko’s enemies have yet to furnish clear proof that his casting of bells into cannon was not for the conquest of the Ainos and the glory of the Shogunate, as was claimed by him.”

“Mito walks with face to the past and eyes turned upward,” murmured the Prince. “No Mito has yet sat on the stool of the Mikado’s high commander of armies. But neither was Hideyoshi the Taiko Sama made Shogun. He held a higher title in the Mikado’s court, and was supreme general in fact though not in name. Is it for the glory of our holy Mikado or for the elevation of Keiki that Mito plots the overthrow of the Shogunate?”

Stung to fury by the bare mention of the threatened disaster to his rule, Iyeyoshi bent forward, his face distorted with murderous rage, and his hand clutching at the hilt of his dirk. The Prince, still smiling under the menace of instant death, kowtowed, and waited on hands and knees, with his neck bared for the blade.

“Gladly does a loyal subject offer life in confirmation of sincerity,” he murmured.

The blood curdled in my veins as the full horror of the moment burst upon me. Unsoftened by my companion’s submissiveness, the Shogun thrust back his long sleeve with his left hand and tightened his grip on the dirk. His eyes narrowed to cruel slits. I knew there would be only one movement,—a flashing stroke from the scabbard that would sever the outstretched neck of the Prince. In the same instant I realized that the death of the father would mean death to the son and the ruin of what he valued far above life,—his mission. I had pledged myself to help Yoritomo, and—I loved his betrothed! What had I to live for?

“Your Highness!” I gasped. “I do not know all your customs. In China a condemned man may sometimes receive punishment through a substitute. Accept my life for the life of my kinsman!”

The Shogun turned his glittering eyes upon me. They were as cold and hard and malignant as the eyes of an enraged snake. Yet the same impulse that had forced my offer now impelled me to creep nearer to him, fearful that he might refuse to accept. I did not realize that my interference was in itself an outrage upon the dignity of the Shogun, punishable with death. First the Prince, then myself! The bared arm of the despot twitched—

Suddenly the distorted face relaxed and the hand on the hilt drew away. Either my offer had penetrated through the crust of ceremonialism to the wellsprings of his nature, or, at the very height of his rage, he had recalled to mind the power of the friendly Owari party and remembered that even he had no lawful right to punish a daimio of the first class other than by deposition with the sanctioning assent of the Mikado.

“Namu Amida Butsu!” he murmured. “Rage is an evil counsellor! Be seated. The tojin offends with his uncouth manners and unsmiling face. Yet he has proved his high sense of loyalty and the filial duty owing to his elder kinsman. I am appeased.”

“Your Highness has spared two unworthy lives,” replied the Prince. “The loyalty of my counsel is still doubted. Grant me leave to withdraw, that I may make proof of sincerity.”

Again a feeling of horror seized me and brought the cold sweat to my face. The gruesome proof of sincerity was hara-kiri. I recalled the suicide of the wounded ronin, and I shuddered. No! Not even for Yoritomo’s sake could I offer this sacrifice of myself for his father. I had not been trained from childhood in the stern samurai code. Still on hands and knees, I stared up at the clouded face of the Shogun, in agonized suspense.

At last the clear gaze and unchanging smile of the Prince won the contest against doubt and suspicion.

“The sincerity of Owari dono is not questioned,” replied the Shogun.

But the Prince was still unsatisfied. “There remains doubt regarding the wisdom of humbly offered counsel,” he insisted.

“Permission is granted Owari dono to present the memorial of Yoritomo Sama, which will be read and considered,” came the welcome response.

We kowtowed together, loudly insucking our breath to express our gratitude and delight. The Shogun rose, and we again kowtowed while he left the room. A screen in the side wall opened before him and closed again without a sound. We were once more alone.

As we settled back on our heels the Prince commended me for my part in the successful outcome of the audience with a glance of warm approval. I could not restrain an exultant exclamation: “We’ve won! He cannot resist Yoritomo’s facts!”

The Prince touched his lips and signed to the rear. A shadow passed across my face. I had not heard even a rustle of silken folds, yet Gengo the court chamberlain was already beside me. He kowtowed, and murmured in a tone of ingratiating obsequiousness: “The august princes are implored to accept the humble services of their servant. The condescension of the great fills with joy the breast of the lowly!”

“The duties of a court chamberlain restrict his services to his lord,” replied my companion.

I had taken a dislike to the man, despite my remembrance of his braveness and swordsmanship, but I thought the Prince spoke with undue harshness. Heedless of the reproof, Gengo looked up, with a fawning smile, and answered significantly: “Great men have accepted aid from foxes.”

“A wise man trusts in the gods, and scorns the goblin power of badgers and foxes,” rejoined the Prince.

“Gold opens gates that steel cannot force, my lord.”

“The gates that are already open may crush those who attempt to close them.”

Gengo cringed and looked up with a bland smile.

“The favor of the exalted Prince of Owari will be remembered by his servant,” he murmured, and he kowtowed, laughing softly and sucking his breath.

The Prince signed me to rise. Gengo rose after us and ushered us out by the way we had come, with utmost obsequiousness. In the waiting room our caps and winged jackets were removed by our chamberlains, who slipped on our lacquered clogs at the threshold.

Gengo conducted our party out across the inner moat and through the palace gardens to the gate in the citadel rampart. There at last he turned back, while we swung out across the great moat and homeward along Kojimachi Street, to bear the good news to Yoritomo.

CHAPTER XVI—Mito Strikes

A second period of anxious waiting followed the visit to the palace. Yoritomo soon completed his memorial which his father at once presented to the Shogun. After that we had to wait in blind uncertainty of the outcome, yet aware that the Mito party was gathering all its strength to bring about the downfall and destruction of Owari.

On the morning of July the sixth, Yoritomo came to my apartments for the first long visit he had been free to pay me since our arrival at Owari Yashiki. As soon as the attendants had served pipes and tea and had withdrawn, he sought to repeat the fervent thanks which he had already showered on me for my impulsive attempt to save his father. I could no longer bear his gratitude.

“Wait, Tomo,” I interrupted. “I have a confession to make. I am ashamed to receive your praises. The least I can do is to confess the bitter truth. I love your little Princess.”

“Do I not already know that?” he replied. “My brother, I grieve for you!”

“Despise me, rather! When I looked into her Madonna face, I could not resist showing her my love—to her, your betrothed!—and I thought myself a gentleman!”

“My betrothed only in name, Worth. How often have I told you that my life has been given?”

“Yet if you succeed?”

He touched his dirk. “You know the customary proof of sincerity. If that is not required, I have vowed to shave my head, and enter the monastery at Zozoji.”

“No, no, Tomo!” I protested. “Consider your chances for a glorious future. If we win against Mito, only the life of the feeble son of the Shogun stands between you and the succession to the throne. As the husband of the Shogun’s daughter and heir of Owari, with the strong friendship of Satsuma—”

“What is the saying of your great poet?” he interrupted. “‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’ Neither power nor love tempt me. If now I can subdue my hatred of Mito and his clan, and fulfil my mission with self-abasement—”

“Be a Buddhist saint if you must, but when you have accomplished your mission, your gods will reward you with a happy life.”

“Your souls have met and loved in some former reincarnation,” he murmured. “Cast off all thought of shame, brother. I have no desire for the maiden. You belong to one another. Your souls are bound together inseparably.”

“Tomo!” I cried, and I bowed over, between shame and intoxicating delight.

Fujimaro entered with the freedom allowed a teacher, and said in his most formal style: “Permission to enter the august presence is humbly entreated by a woman of low degree, the geisha Kohana.”

Yoritomo nodded to me, and I answered: “Bring her in without delay.”

As Fujimaro glided out, I bent towards Yoritomo with a quick question: “Another of Keiki’s plots?”

“Would that be a matter of surprise?” he replied, with his placid smile. “She will soon tell us. We were talking of one to whom you have given your heart with true Occidental romanticism. I grieve for you, brother!”

“That I should have betrayed my friend?”

“No, not that. I have never stood between you and the maiden in wish, and will not in fact. I grieve because I know that your love is hopeless in this life. At the best, you have only the chance to unite yourselves in death, and even that union is no more than a remote possibility.”

“Union!—death!” I repeated.

“When lovers know there is no hope of union in this life, they pledge themselves to love one another for seven existences, and—” Again he touched his dirk hilt.

“That?” I cried. “Ask her to sacrifice herself for me?”

“You Westerners talk of faith. We practise it. Azai will gladly end her life here for the bliss of being joined to you in the world beyond. She loves you.”

“Impossible! I am a tojin. The very sight of me frightened her.”

“At the first, yes. Now she loves you. My father saw your soul in her eyes.”

“Impossible!” I repeated.

“Impossible for you to be united in this life,” he repeated. “None the less, she is yours so far as love gives you the right,—and she is yours so far as the wish of your brother is to be considered.”

“Tomo, you will help me?”

“I will help.” He waved back my outstretched hand. “They come.”

Fujimaro opened a screen for Kohana San to enter, and, at a sign from me, withdrew. The geisha had not paused to cast off her hood and gray street kimono. Panting from haste and fear, she glided across to us on her knees, her unsmiling face pallid beneath its rouge and rice powder.

“My lord,” she gasped, “Mito strikes! The Council, unknown to His Highness—”

“Midzuano has ordered our arrest,” stated Yoritomo.

“I have had no calls to Mito yashiki. A delayed message came from the ronin Yuki, who was captain of the hatamotos—Keiki sought to bribe him against us. He pretended to agree—”

Yoritomo twisted about to my tokonoma and opened the lacquered case in which I kept my revolvers and ammunition. He thrust one of the revolvers into his bosom, and gave me the other.

“We must stand before the judges without our swords,” he said. “That is due the dignity of the court. But we cannot tell how far Keiki and Midzuano may induce them to proceed. It is better to die quickly than under torture.”

“And take Midzuano and Keiki with us,” I added.

“If it comes to the point, and they are present.” He turned to Kohana San. “You have been followed?—seen to enter?”

“Not that I can tell, my lord.”

“Call Fujimaro.”

I clapped my hands, and the chamberlain appeared at the side of the room.

Yoritomo pointed to the kneeling girl. “Let denial be made that the geisha who entered Owari Yashiki was Kohana San. To-night return the girl to Shinagawa in a norimon, with escort, incognito, but passing out the main gate.”

“My lord! a geisha in a norimon, and carried through the state gate of Owari Yashiki!” murmured the outraged chamberlain, masking his amazement behind his suave smile, yet unable to repress the note of horror that underlaid his mildly worded protest.

“Will Keiki then believe the spies that report the coming of Kohana San to Owari? They will say she is still here, yet she will be in Shinagawa.”

“My lord! the life of a dancer against the dignity of Owari—”

“The dignity of Owari against the defeat of those who would ruin Owari and Nippon. The geisha is now worth a thousand men to Owari. Seal your lips and the lips of all others. She will leave the norimon in some dark by-way. You will loiter through Shinagawa, and return with one of the guard inside. Go now and request leave of my august father for us to appear before him.”

Fujimaro hastened out, and we turned to question Kohana San. Before she could tell how the message had reached her, the chamberlain reappeared, and announced that one of the Prince’s personal attendants had come to inform us our presence was desired in the audience hall.

“Mito strikes. It is for us to parry and counter,” said Yoritomo. We slipped our swords into our girdles, and rose. At the threshold he turned to Kohana San. “Pray to the war god and to your kitten.”

“Ten thousand felicitous years to my lord!” she murmured. “The might of Hachiman and the craft of the geisha cat shall aid him!”

The waiting attendant conducted us direct to the audience hall, his unsmiling face a portent of calamity. At the entrance he halted and kowtowed. We passed in alone. The Prince was seated in state before the grand tokonoma and close beside him on his left sat a visitor also dressed in winged jacket,—a large and swarthy man, with features of the heavy German type.

When we entered, refreshments had been served, and the only retainers present were the six counsellors. Yoritomo led me to the head of the room, where we knelt and laid our swords upon the mats at our right, and exchanged bows with the Prince and his guest. I had no need of my friend’s greeting to the stranger to divine his identity. I had already perceived from the circle cross upon his coat and his position on the left of the Prince that he was none other than Yoritomo’s friend Shimadzu Nariakira, the great Daimio of Satsuma. Accepting the precedent set by the Prince, he greeted me as his junior but peer, and proceeded to look me over with a gaze as frank and kindly as it was keen.

“Woroto Sama is far different in appearance from the hairy tojin that I have seen on the black ships,” he said. “The august Prince of Owari has told me the deeds of his guest. My regret is doubled.”

Yoritomo glanced inquiringly at his father, who explained with utmost calmness of tone and manner: “Our noble friend, the Daimio of Satsuma, has received the command of the Shogunate to bring the heir of Owari and the tojin lord before the High Court in netted norimons.”

In a flash Yoritomo drew open his robes below the girdle and placed the point of his dirk to his side, ready for the fatal cross cut. Calm and steady as if cast in bronze, he looked up at his father for the signal to strike. The Prince turned quietly to his guest. The Daimio sat mute and impassive. The Prince faced the counsellors, who consulted together for what seemed to me an age of hideous suspense. Yet throughout it all the Prince and the Daimio waited, to all appearance as apathetic as lumps of clay, while my friend crouched, no less impassive in look, the cruel knife held ready to rend his loins in dreadful self-immolation.

At last the karo spoke, in a voice devoid of all emotion. “The words of the august lords have been heard and considered. Humble counsel is given that Yoritomo Sama should bear the present shame and should risk appearance before the High Court. To commit hara-kiri now would save his personal honor. It would not be proof of sincerity should doubt be expressed as to his motive in presenting the memorial to His Highness the Shogun.”

The Prince nodded in assent. Yoritomo still waited.

“Does the Shogun know of this order?” he asked.

“That we have yet to learn,” answered the Prince. “The risk is great. So also is the chance of great gain.”

Yoritomo sheathed his dirk, and tendered both it and his sword to the Daimio. I offered my sword and dirk. The Daimio smiled gravely, and waved them back with his fan.

“We shall all lay aside our swords when we enter the presence of the High Court,” he said.

The Prince clapped his hands, and attendants entered to take up the swords of the four lords. The Prince himself escorted his powerful guest to the state portico, Yoritomo and I following close after. At the entrance, norimons with Satsuma bearers and guards were stationed in waiting for us before the gold-lacquered palanquin of the Daimio. With no other display of feeling than the required smile of etiquette, we took leave of the Prince, slipped our swords into our girdles and entered our norimons.

The head of the cortege passed out into the great courtyard and through the massive gateway, followed by Yoritomo’s norimon and then by my own, each surrounded by a guard of stalwart Satsuma men. The Daimio came after us, near the end of the procession. Outside the gateway the heralds began to chant a monotonous cry: “Shi-ta-ni-iro! shi-ta-ni-iro!—kneel down! kneel down.”

As my norimon swung around, I peered out and saw the standard bearers carrying the insignia of their lord on tall shafts. The Daimio of Satsuma was making a state progress. The thought that we were in the charge of the most powerful of all the daimios, and that he was our friend, reassured my apprehensions of the coming ordeal. I drew a sigh of relief, and was about to settle back in my narrow box, when something struck lightly across the norimon and fell down over the windows. I peered out again, and saw the meshes of a net.

CHAPTER XVII—In the Pit of Torment

The ride would have been tedious at best. With that symbolic net hung over me, it was well-nigh unendurable. More than once the indignity of being paraded as a prisoner through the aristocratic section of Yedo all but overpowered my self-control. Only by the severest repression was I able to constrain myself from drawing sword and cutting my way out of my enmeshed palanquin. The saving thought was that Satsuma had left us our swords and that the net did not necessarily imply degradation.

With the heralds ever chanting their cry, “Kneel down! kneel down!” we marched in solemn state into the official quarter and slantingly across it, past the great Sakaruda Gate where we had parted from the cortege of the Princess, to a gate in the angle of the moat, half a mile beyond. Here I expected an order for us to dismount and enter afoot. But the gate led us into the Second Castle, which is the separately moated portion of the official quarter, lying along the east side of the citadel.

We now had to go only a short distance to reach the yashiki in which the magistrates of the Supreme or High Court held their sessions. As prisoners of high rank, we were carried in through the gateway and across the courtyard to the portico. The Daimio followed in state. When he had stepped out upon the mats laid for him by the hatamoto attendants of the court, the nets were removed from our norimons, and we were courteously assisted to alight beside the Daimio. At a sign from him, we handed over our swords and dirks to a pair of his own retainers, while he gave his sword alone into the keeping of one of the hatamotos.

With this we were ushered after the Daimio into a waiting-room and served with tea and rice cakes,—an extreme of ceremonial hospitality for which I felt more impatience than gratitude. We had good reason to believe that those who so politely entertained us were our enemies,—that we were going before a prejudiced court. I wondered how Yoritomo could preserve his tranquil bearing. For myself I found much difficulty in imitating the austere solemnity of Satsuma, whose deportment I had resolved to copy. In my perturbed state of mind, the task was by no means easy, yet I succeeded so far as visibly to impress the hatamotos with the dignity of the tojin lord.

At last we were summoned into the presence of the court. The trial chamber was an apartment of medium size, divided into a stone-paved pit, level with the ground below the mansion, and a matted platform or continuation of the house floor, three or four feet higher than the pit bottom. Upon the centre of the platform sat the magistrates in a row, with several court secretaries or reporters on their right.

Turning my glance from the judges, I stared down into the space before them with a thrill of horror. Along the walls of the pit were ranged grotesquely modelled instruments and machines, the very shape of which was a menace and a torment. Before them stood guards armed with hooked and forked implements used to entangle and pin down unruly prisoners. Worst of all were the three men of the eta, or pariah class, who knelt beside a post in the centre of the pit, grim and silent, their cotton robes tucked up into their girdles, their corded arms bared to the shoulder.

The three swordbearers knelt in a corner, while Satsuma was conducted to a cushion on the left of the magistrates. He seated himself and exchanged bows with a lean, cold-faced daimio who had preceded him. A hatamoto signed us to descend a steep flight of steps into the pit. Without a shadow of change in his serene face, Yoritomo led the way down. At the bottom, attendants slipped lacquered clogs upon our feet, that we might not soil our silk foot-mittens upon the stone flagging.

We halted near the steps, yet close enough to the post where the pariahs stood for me to see a splotch of fresh blood on the black-stained flagstones at its foot. Yoritomo saw me shudder, and whispered reassuringly, in English, “Remember, brother, we have the pistols, and there will be no attempt at torture if we tell the truth. Conceal nothing except our knowledge of Keiki’s plot.”

I drew in a deep breath, and turned my gaze away from the pit, to look at the magistrates. They were studying me with a supercilious curiosity such as a lady of fashion might exhibit while viewing a painted savage. Pride spurred me out of the black mood of horror and despair into which I had sunk. With chin uplifted, I returned the insolence of the judges in a contemptuous glance. Yet intense as was my anger, I found myself almost disconcerted when I met the gaze of the daimio beside Satsuma. His face was as immobile as a death-mask, and his dull eyes peered out at me through the narrow lids with a glassy stare, as cold and emotionless as the eyes of a corpse.

“Who is that beside your friend?” I muttered.

“The chief of the Elder Council,” whispered Yoritomo.

I stared closer at the repellent face. This, then, was Midzuano Echizen-no-kami, the Shogun’s grand vizier or premier,—our enemy and the friend of Mito. What chance had we of a fair trial before a court influenced if not overawed by the ally of those who sought our destruction? According to the ancient law of the land, we had committed deeds punishable with death. What possibility could there be for us to escape condemnation by a court acting in the interests of our enemies?

“Yoritomo, son of Owari dono!” called one of the secretaries, and he signed with his fan.

Yoritomo stepped forward before the judges, and bowed to them with grave dignity. Another secretary lifted a sheet of writing to his forehead, and read slowly: “Charges have been made that Yoritomo, son of Owari dono, left the shores of Nippon; that he has returned to the shores of Nippon from the lands of the tojins; and that he has brought with him into the country a tojin who belongs to the evil sect.”

The reading of the brief indictment was followed by a profound hush, in which the only sound I could hear was the quick drumming of my heart. The silence was broken by one of the magistrates, who leaned forward and asked sharply: “What has Yoritomo Sama to say to the charges?”

The secretaries wetted their inkbrushes and wrote down the question with swift strokes. They did not have long to wait for Yoritomo’s answer. He smiled up into the faces of those who were about to condemn him, and replied without a trace of hesitancy:

“Regarding the first and second charges, no proof can be brought forward by the august court, yet I speak freely the truth. Many years have passed since word came from Nagasaki how the hairy tojins had humbled the pride of the arrogant Chinese and forced them with cannonballs to open their ports to tojin trade. That is well known to all men of samurai blood.”

“It is well known,” assented the magistrate.

Yoritomo bowed, and continued: “When I had attained to manhood I chanced upon a full account of the tojin victory and China’s humiliation. The realization that a like humiliation might come to the sacred Empire of the Rising Sun sobered me in the midst of drunken revels. I put on pilgrim dress and journeyed to the holy shrine of Ise. There I prayed for enlightenment. The High Ones sent me a vision, in which I was directed to cross the seas and learn the secrets of tojin power. I waited my opportunity, and embarked in one of the black ships.”

“Your accomplices?” demanded the magistrate who had spoken before.

“I had no accomplices. I boarded the black ship unknown to any person in Nippon.”

“Was this at Nagasaki, on the Dutch ship, or on one of the Chinese junks?” asked another magistrate.

“On neither, nor was it at Nagasaki.”

“Where was it?” queried the first judge.

“That is not to be told,” replied my friend.

The magistrates conferred together in low murmurs. After a time one of them signed with his fan to the torturers. As the men advanced, Yoritomo folded his arms and faced them. Though I knew his hand was gripped on the revolver under the edge of his robe, there was no shade of change perceptible in his serene face. I folded my arms and reached in to grip my own revolver.

The magistrate nearest Midzuano Echizen-no-kami leaned towards him as though to catch some faintly whispered remark. The leading torturer reached out to grasp Yoritomo’s shoulder. The magistrate raised his fan in a restraining gesture, and said authoritatively: “Let the point rest for the present. The prisoner has confessed to the first charge. Make note that, according to his own statement, he left the shores of Nippon. He was not driven to sea by storm, but boarded a ship of the tojins and sailed from Nippon of his own free will.”

“Under the guidance of the gods and for the sake of the holy Mikado,” added Yoritomo.

One of the judges murmured a protest, but the last speaker signed to the secretaries. “Write down the claim of the prisoner,” he ordered. “Regarding the second charge, it is proved by the confession of the first. Yoritomo, son of Owari dono, left the shores of Nippon. He now stands before us. Therefore he has returned to Nippon. There remains the third charge.”

“First, as to my return to Nippon,” replied Yoritomo, “I make defence that, having learned much of the tojin peoples and their power, I come back, not in defiance of the edict, but as a loyal subject, to counsel the Shogunate against the mistakes of misinformation.”

“Make note that the prisoner confesses his return to Nippon for the purpose of counselling the Shogunate with the forbidden knowledge of the barbarians,” said the magistrate nearest Midzuano. He turned to Yoritomo and repeated: “There remains the third charge.”

“The third charge is false,” replied my friend. “Adamisu Woroto, my august tojin kinsman, is not a member of the evil sect.”