they call me," Adams corrected him, "the Japan word for Pilot. Not Anjy. Our old guard told me."
"He shall tell us the Japan word for spoon-maker then," Santvoort grinned. "I, too, must have a name. Now that we have spoons to eat our rice with and Japan to eat it in, all we lack for our complete comfort is—our exact latitude."
"And you'll have that," said Adams, "as soon as you've cut a mortice through the second cross-piece while I, somehow, get the bar marked off."
"Without your proper latitude," the Dutchman said, "you are like a bereaved widow."
The remark moved the thoughts of Adams far away.
"That uncle of yours, Melchior," he said, "—you spoke of me to him so that he will remember?—in a month it will be two years since we sailed, and my wife will be able to claim my wages according to the indenture."
"He will remember," said Santvoort. "He, too, seemed to know you of old, as these Japonians do. As I myself did, now I come to think of it. When old Tim Shotten brought you along in tow that day in your well-named Gravesend, it was as though I was meeting again with some old schoolfellow who had just forgotten me and my language. Why is it, Anjy?"
Adams knew now that huffiness was a silly response to the Dutchman's nonsense. "Probably," he said, "because your brains differ from other men's. But God knows how my wife will get her claim pressed on the company."
The thought, now that he had put it into Dutch words, set up an uneasy stirring in his mind. He had been pondering, till then, the matter of graduating the sticks for his cross-staff; no easy matter since he had neither protractor nor divider but only string and a straight-edge—straight as he could make it with his eye and careful scraping with his knife. The unease made active by Santvoort's casual use of the word "widow" threw the problem into disorder.
His wife was apt, one way or another, to make a mess of that claim. She could not help it; it was no blame to her; but there it was. She could not herself ship to Rotterdam, as he could have shipped, to make her claim on the copy of the indenture he had left with her and explained to her. Nor could he—now that old Timothy Shotten was undoubtedly lost and the bones of Tom Adams his young brother left ashore in Peru —think of any suitable emissary. The kind of vague thought that kept revolving in his mind was the ease with which he himself could have settled the whole matter in a week or within a fortnight . . . and after settling it he would have returned with a free mind to the making of his cross-staff and the reading of his observations.
CHAPTER VII
THERE was more leisure in the atmosphere of his next meeting with Ieyasu. The attitude of the Emperor was more whimsical; his smile had less of meditation and more of geniality than it had had before. Information from his agents and from his own examinings of men and of facts had recently led him to believe that a Southern army opposed to himself would be weak on its right flank, where opinion was stronger for himself. He had seen his genial old friend Matsura Ho-in who could, and assuredly would, strike at the possible enemy's rear with a dauntless company led by other Korean veterans grizzled and scarred as Ho-in himself. . . .
The Pilot, fidgeting and anxious about an armful of books and instruments, amused him. He asked the interpreter why he so urgently wanted them; what was the use of instruments of navigation to a pilot who had no ship?
Adams explained that the charts were wrong; that he wanted to fix upon them the true position of Japan by determining the position of the castle. How, the Emperor asked, could he do that? Adams told the interpreter to mention the instrument he was making out of wood, since the ship's cross-staff was still missing from the collection held by the Emperor. He turned up a page of bearings in the almanac and took the dividers. He tried to make it clear that by using the notches on the disc of the astrolabe he could draw degree-rays that would enable him to graduate his cross-staff; and it was clear that Ieyasu cared not a plum for astrolabes and dividers and globes and compasses; but he cared, peculiarly, for the way Adams conducted himself towards these things and towards himself. He let him talk and gesticulate. He let him draw a circle and divide it into quadrants, showing how an angle of ninety degrees could be accurately arrived at; and in the manner of an elder humouring a child, he pushed the complete heap of things towards Adams.
"Let him climb upon his wall and do his deeds," he said to the interpreter.
Thus they were dismissed again in friendly sort: for the interpreter told him, after more words from his Lord leyasu, that it was well with the ship and his friends, except that two more had died of their sickness. He did not know which two.
For five or six weeks they stayed where they were. The time did not hang unduly heavily upon them, for they were still in need of food and sleep.
Santvoort was the best of companions in convalescence; for he ate as well as he rested, nodding and smiling the slow smile with which he assumed that the morrow should be no worse than yesterday or to-day.
It took the best part of that five or six weeks for them to become fully conscious of their safety. It was not until this consciousness had become established—based, as it was, on nothing but the whimsical smile of a strange, nimble little man— that their minds moved out of their lethargy to speculate upon the future.
Adams could speculate only on the means of adapting the new circumstances to the old plan; for his mind was not of the sort that is easily shaken into a vision of new ideas.
He saw a ship; it was dismasted, battered and sprung—but it remained a ship and the only problem was masts and canvas, pitch and resin and carpenters.
They had brought a cargo of merchandise; and here again the problem was clearly defined—to sell what had not been pilfered and to recover what had; for the Emperor, he kept on telling Santvoort, was fair. Santvoort, however, divined the future more accurately, or else had less interest in it.
The fellow, Adams reflected, had no wife; no children of whom he knew, to place upon him the obligation of proving any bond. It was well enough for him to shuffle about in the sun or snooze in the shade with a heart content. Chance, through no fault of his own, had bereft him of the only responsibility he had ever known—the handful of men he had undertaken to control; and the bereavement made of him a man of leisure and complete ease. Just as responsibility always seemed to slide from the round wide shoulders of Santvoort, so upon the square ones of Adams it always seemed to settle. Weighted by the wife in Gillingham and the small daughters, he had set out upon this adventure. Now the ship itself and her cargo had become entirely his concern; and upon him also had fallen the onus of all relationship to the Emperor. Santvoort was oblivious of the significance of the stars in their courses and cared nought for the sun's declivity, while Adams cared for both.
He worked at the figures in the Liefde's log, at his observations and at the chart he was making; and he brooded upon the condition of the ship and her cargo and upon the house on the hill at Gillingham where he had left a woman and the children with a promise of better days.
They could make a few meanings clear to the serving-boy now as he busied himself about them with food. The soldier-interpreter was generally available to them when they wanted him, but the Emperor was not. He was away, Adams gathered, for an indefinite time. When at last he did have access again to leyasu Santvoort stayed at their lodging, contentedly nursing a mild pain in his stomach.
Led into the chamber by the interpreter, Adams was met by the same whimsical smile. leyasu spoke directly to him this time, slowly, so that Adams was able to recognize the phrases as greeting. In reply he aired his knowledge of a phrase of thanks, and leyasu laughed to the interpreter, who said to Adams, "You will soon have opportunity for learning more."
Adams
