every whit as sound," was the smiling answer.
Adams shrugged his shoulders against the defeat this talk held for him. "If I could speak your tongue," he said; "or if you could understand mine, I would have more to say."
"It will come soon enough, An-jin," said Ieyasu. "Lesser men than you have learned to speak our tongue in a very few moons. We will see then what you have to say. In the meantime see your captain and tell him we would buy his pieces."
"He, too, is responsible to others," said Adams. "We are but the servants of a great company. What we have we only hold for them."
"Very well, then," said Ieyasu. "I will hold it in turn for you. Your pieces—the property of your masters—will be safer on the walls of my fortress here than on your ship. More lives stand between them and destruction on these walls than at the waterside. You yourself shall instruct us in their care; and in their use—if your captain will condescend to lend them to me as a friendliness to a friend. As to the other service of which you spoke—to other masters—that, surely, is dissolved by your disasters. You are all guests now—equally. You have no masters other than your host. Take whatever comfort you may find in his hospitality and learn, meanwhile, to speak his tongue."
"Yes," Adams mumbled. "All very well." He was thinking not so much of himself at the moment as of what he would say to the others. For himself there seemed to be a vague reasonableness about it all. He knew now that he was defeated utterly; but, somehow, in the defeat there was no sting. But the telling to others that they were defeated—captain and crew—was another story altogether.
"Shun doubt, An-jin," said leyasu quietly with the voice of Mitsu. "Follow the swing of the needle. Deal with destiny as it is—not as it might be but is not."
Adams replied, mumbling again . . . "All very well to talk . . ."
CHAPTER XV
To Santvoort he said, "We might as well face it, Melchior. Here we are, and here we are likely to stay. He will not let us go, and go we cannot."
"What is it he would do with us?" asked the Dutchman. Adams treated the question as though it had been addressed to Mitsu, who was walking back with them. But since Mitsu treated it as though he himself had been a dozen leagues away, Adams said, "God knows . . . make gunners of us, perhaps—but look—" he pointed at an immense bronze piece mounted at an embrasure in the wall. "Mitsu," he said; "you have ordnance already."
"Yes," said Mitsu, "in abundance. But it is said that pieces from your Europe do not, at times, split in the firing."
"Have you gunners then?" asked Adams.
"Yes," said Mitsu. "Not soldiers, you understand—but artisans from below; makers of crackers and fireworks. They shoot off ordnance when there is need, for a wage. It is not, I think, for the base occupation of working cannons that the General would hold you as his—"
"For God's sake," Santvoort interrupted him, "don't say 'guests' again. It is the best joke we have heard in this country, but it was the first one and it has lost its fun."
Adams was thinking that it was, at any rate, time now for Mary to have lodged her claim in Rotterdam and to have had justice and payment from that good uncle of Santvoort's.
"What is your Japan word for 'guest,' Mitsu?" he asked.
Mitsu very solemnly said, "Okyaku Sama."
Adams repeated it. Then to Santvoort he said, "Swallow that, Melchior. And look——"
They stopped, looking towards the harbour.
Mitsu said, "You see your road now and I will return to the castle. If you lose your way any man but a zany can put you upon it again. I will see you again to-morrow, An-jin, when you have told your captain of his loan to my General. You know the house of his lodging, by the water. If you have need of anything, tell Magome."
"Aye," said Adams, "I'll tell him. I know your language now. 'Okyaku Sama'—honourable guest."
"It is sufficient for the time being," said Mitsu and left them.
They stood still, looking at the harbour.
The sun was at its height and their two shadows were the shadows of their great straw hats; discs that touched, rim to rim, in the soft white dust of the road. Behind them was the castle that Ieyasu had built as a bulwark against the Eastern turbulence in his early days, and now was his bulwark against the treachery of West and South. Its strength was of stone and mortar, of bronze pieces and of powder and shot. The cement of this bulwark was the mortar that held the stones together; it was also the judgment of Ieyasu that picked his men, and the peculiar genius of him that held them. The palace was the symbol, in the sprawl of city, of the city's unity. And the city's unity was the unity of a storm. There were currents in it, and under-currents, and whirls and eddies; there were depths and shallows, raging wildnesses and stillnesses as of death. Stillnesses that were death. The men of it had thoughts that mingled together into the single thought of an army; and thoughts that were solitary, incommunicable by word, but active in every daily shift of each man's matching his poor wits against a hard destiny. Every neighbour, every stranger, every friend was a tool for the hazardous cobbling together of a livelihood, for the fabrication of a scheme, the materialisation of an ideal whose material was nought but the conduct of men.
And it was heedless of this storm and its whirls and eddies that the two strangers stood in the shadow of their straw hats looking over the squat roofs of the crazy city of Yedo that was to become Tokyo.
They raised their eyes to the sky and stood without moving; for they beheld above the roofs a dragon. It was scarlet in the light and black in the creases of its shadows; and it lurched and swooped away from a colossal fish.
The monsters circled and manœuvred while the Englishman and the Dutchman watched them in wonder.
They stood poised in the air. They trembled and shook as they sped abreast, further aloft from the earth, till the dragon suddenly stopped and tottered. It writhed in an agony and then tumbled away, sinking slowly and lifeless to earth again, like a corpse trembling on the tide.
The fish soared magnificently upward. . . .
"God!" said Adams. "They can make kites that will answer the helm of a thumbnail at their thread's end a mile away. . . . And they rig their ships square with shutters of wood instead of sails, and with as much answer in them to wind and helm as a gammon of ham."
"They've made us answer to wind and helm right enough," said the Dutchman. Then he shrugged his shoulders. "I'm sorry, Will, for you, with your wife and your home and such like. For me it does not matter. He can't keep us here for ever; and I'd as lief see something of this land. It's been a great way to come, and——"
"Aye," said Adams thoughtfully. "He can't keep us here for ever. I, too, would as soon—as soon——" he glanced, as he hesitated, over roofs and dusty roadways, at the harbour with its rabble of junks and skiffs and rafts of timber. "I'd as soon— I mean, Melchior—if we went home now, we would be going as a failed and tatterdemalion lot; empty-pouched and empty-handed. But when we do go——"
That was all they could say of it; so they walked on.
"The captain will take it in pepper," said Santvoort.
Adams said, "Not he. He's too weary for sneezing. I'll tell him it is good that we stay awhile and fill our pockets; and as good he will take it."
