was, in a sense, staring at himself; for he had not realised, till then, that his decision was so vehement, or indeed that he had come to a decision at all.
"Do you not want a pistol and a knife, then?" asked the captain.
"I want them well enough," said Adams. "And there is nothing I can see to prevent our having them. If they come in the boat we can take them. But as for going with the dog, that is another story."
"Do you think he still lies?" asked Santvoort. Their minds were still open on that point and Adams, after his vehemence, surprised them by saying, quietly, "No."
"Then, if he is honest-" one of them began; but Adams interrupted him; "Even if he is honest he is—he is—" he hesitated and stumbled for some word that would make clear to them the thought that was dim in his own mind. "He is himself."
That was the best he could do with it, for his decision had come from a process too simple for discussions or explanations. He had considered Ieyasu who had called him "An-jin" and the priest who had called him "son." As the result of the two considerations his decision was already made. He could not have explained it any more than certain other men could have explained their choice when they dropped the business of net-mending and followed after the stranger who had said to them, "Follow me."
"You go," he said, "if go you must. I will stay. The odds are against your getting home—but there is a chance that you may do it that way."
"Do you not want to go, then?" It was Santvoort who actually asked the question though something in the manner of Adams's speaking had brought it uppermost into the minds of all three.
"Well enough," said Adams. "I suppose I do want to go, as you do. But-"
"Four would have a better chance than three," the surgeon suggested.
Adams shrugged his shoulders. "That," he said, "no man can say. The contrary may be the truth. It is all a hazard. Perhaps my staying here would make your going safer, since I know the Portingal's share in it, and could perhaps hold him to his bargain. But that is as it may be. Go. I stay."
"Who said we were going?" demanded Santvoort. "If it is not good enough for you, Will, it is not good enough for me. I stay too."
"We have by no means decided," said the captain. "There is still much to be said on both sides. But if Santvoort and you are already resolved—well, it is all one to me."
"And to me," said the surgeon. "For, when in doubt do nothing, is the soundest wisdom that I have ever learned."
"Doubt," said Adams. "I am in no doubt. I will follow no man who lies and schemes counter to the Emperor. He would have crossed us, but the Emperor spared us."
They drank another round of the wine the padre had brought them, and another to empty the second bottle.
They began to see their rejection of the offer in the light of an adventure, and talked of it brightly.
"In doubt do nothing, according to the surgeon," Adams said, "but there is much we can, and will do. We will discover the whole plot to Mitsu and his men." Santvoort opened the third bottle. He filled the mugs, and Adams went on. "Let the boat come; Mitsu and others will board it instead of us. The pistols and knives will prove it—and the carrying of arms is itself a powerful offence."
They grew loud in their talk after their months of perplexed silence.
Adams was as lusty as the best of them. "We'll show them!" he shouted. "The Emperor shall see who are his prowling enemies, and who his friends. Drink to him, lads!" They raised their mugs and stood absurdly ceremonious with their shoulders bent under the cuddy ceiling, steadying themselves with a hand on the table.
"The Emperor!" Adams gave them the toast, pompous enough for a Lord Mayor's banquet. "leyasu! our friend!"
The others mumbled after him, "The Emperor," and bent their knees to straighten their throats to the heel-taps in their mugs.
It was the drink that had brought lustiness and final lucidity to the words of Adams. It was assisted, possibly, by his luck.
For at a knot-hole in the planking of the cuddy's dim ceiling was the flat, neat little ear of Mitsu, where it had been for three hours.
For three hours the swordsman who was also acrobat and the trustiest of Ieyasu's secret service men had been stewing in his sweat between the timbers of the poop deck and the planks of the cuddy ceiling. He had not spent ten minutes on the ship before finding that the removal of a small locker-side above the tiller would give him a place where an eye and an ear placed alternately at the knot-hole would tell him much that his Lord would be interested to know.
CHAPTER XII
HE listened with the blandest innocence when Adams and Santvoort disclosed to him next morning the padre's plot.
"It's proof," Adams said hotly at the end of the tale, "proof, man! What more do you want than a promise of firearms and blades?"
"Ieyasu's judgment is his proof," said the other. Then he grinned. "As you have cause to know." His superiority to them both in taking this information as neither a joke nor a disaster exasperated Adams. It seemed that speech itself was no way of communicating with these people. He cursed in English and in Portuguese and then said, "If you won't tell the Emperor, I will."
"Naturally I will tell him," said Mitsu. He grinned again, and this time Adams felt that communication was not so impossible. Mitsu straightened his torso and his throat and held up an imaginary mug and said, pompously, in as good Dutch as he could make of it: "Ieyasu, our friend." He staggered away a pace or two with a seaman's unsteady pace and then collapsed in laughter. It was minutes before they could get anything out of him but explosions, and Adams stood by in profound dismay.
Foreground and background were an enigma as vast as reefs and shoals, as rocks and mountains and stars when a man had neither line nor staff, neither compass nor tables wherewith to sound and plot them. Imperturbability could make a meaningless image of a face perched above the nimbleness of a leopard. Laughter could convulse the face and paralyse the body—the gurgling and giggling as of a tickled two-year-old. The secrets in a man's heart were stifled because other men could not comprehend his talk; and a man could keep no secrets because the very walls had ears. . . .
"An-jin," said Mitsu when his laughter was spent, leaving him weak but very happy. "An-iin, it is lawful for a soldier to punish any man carrying weapons. To-night we will make a game."
The game was a simple one—simple as Mitsu's laughter, and was as simply played.
The boat drew alongside two hours before midnight. The lantern produced by the soldier who answered the boatman's hail suddenly went out. It was in pitchy darkness that the four men with their gifts from the padre climbed up, and still in pitchy darkness that four men lowered themselves from the port into the boat, and the boat shoved off. In darkness and in silence the boatman plied his oars till a thin bamboo whistled in the air and came to sudden rest across his shoulders. His howls were lost in the laughter of Mitsu and his three colleagues as they beat him and then tossed him over the boat side to swim for it, or sink.
They came back to the ship where lights had been lighted and brought aboard four small pistols and powder-horns, four bags of balls and four neat poniards. The fact that the four present-bearers had disappeared, that Adams was recovering from a kick in his stomach and Santvoort was massaging the back of his neck
