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Page 4
III.
The next day the rain came down in torrents, a regular downpour,
merciless and unceasing, blinding and drenching everything,--a thick
rain so dense that it was impossible to see through it from one end of
the vessel to the other. It seemed as though the clouds of the whole
world had amassed themselves in Nagasaki bay, and had chosen this
great green funnel to stream down to their hearts' content. And it
rained, it rained, it became almost as dark as night, so thickly did
the rain fall. Through a veil of crumbled water, we still perceived
the base of the mountains, but the summits were lost to sight among
the great somber masses weighing down upon us. Above us shreds of
clouds, seemingly torn from the dark vault, draggled across the trees,
like vast gray rags,--continually melting away in water, torrents of
water. There was wind too, and it howled through the ravines with a
deep-sounding tone. The whole surface of the bay, bespattered by the
rain, flogged by the gusts of wind that blew from all quarters,
splashed, moaned and seethed in violent agitation.
What wretched weather for a first landing, and how was I to find a
wife through such a deluge, in an unknown country!
* * * * *
No matter! I dressed myself and said to Yves, who smiled at my
obstinate determination in spite of unfavorable circumstances:
"Hail me a 'sampan,' brother, please."
Yves then, by a motion of his arm through the wind and rain, summoned
a kind of little white wooden sarcophagus which was skipping near us
on the waves, sculled by a couple of yellow boys stark naked in the
rain. The craft approached us, I jumped into it, then through a little
trap-door shaped like a rat-trap that one of the scullers throws open
for me, I slipped in and stretched myself at full length on a mat in
what is called the "cabin" of a sampan.
There was just room enough for my body to lie in this floating coffin,
which is moreover scrupulously clean, white with the whiteness of new
deal boards. I was well sheltered from the rain, that fell pattering
on my lid, and thus I started off for the town, lying in this box,
flat on my stomach, rocked by one wave, roughly shaken by another, at
moments almost over-turned; and through the half-opened door of my
rat-trap I saw, upside down, the two little creatures to whom I had
entrusted my fate, children of eight or ten years of age at the most,
who, with little monkeyish faces, had however fully developed muscles
like miniature men, and were already as skillful as any regular old
salts.
* * * * *
They began to shout; no doubt we were approaching the landing-place.
And indeed, through my trap-door, which I had now thrown wide open, I
saw quite near to me the gray flag-stones on the quays. I got out of
my sarcophagus and prepared to set foot for the first time in my life
on Japanese soil.
All was streaming around us, and the irritating, tiresome rain dashed
into my eyes.
No sooner had I landed, than there bounded towards me about a dozen
strange beings, of what description it was almost impossible to make
out through the blinding showers--a species of human hedge-hog, each
dragging some large black thing; they came screaming around me and
stopped my progress. One of them opened and held over my head an
enormous closely-ribbed umbrella, decorated on its transparent surface
with paintings of storks; and they all smiled at me in an engaging
manner with an air of expectation.
I had been forewarned: these were only the _djins_ who were touting
for the honor of my preference; nevertheless I was startled at this
sudden attack, this Japanese welcome on a first visit to land (the
_djins_ or _djin-richisans_, are the runners who drag little carts,
and are paid for conveying people to and fro, being hired by the hour
or the distance, as cabs are with us).
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