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 showed the chart he had made, comparing it with the false one from Lintschoten's book by which he had sailed, leyasu, for all that he studied the chart carefully enough, seemed to find a greater interest outside it.
The explanations of Adams drifted from halting Portuguese to Dutch less halting. From Dutch they became English, but it was all one; for the interpreter, at a sign from his Lord, had ceased trying to interpret. Adams was thus undisturbed and uninterrupted in his sketch of the homeward course.
He stopped and asked directly when steps might be taken for the selling of the cargo and for the trimming of the ship.
"Presently," was the answer. "Presently. In good time."
It was now the end of June. War was brewing for leyasu and leyasu was brewing the last of it for Ishida Mitsunari. He had disposed his men and had taken their pledges in his enemy's rear.
He spoke again and the interpreter said: "His Lordship now gives you your leave. You will return with the Dutchman to your friends, and to your ship. Let your way be the way of peace."
Even if he had had the tongue, Adams would not have had the words for all his thoughts. Of returning to his friends he could have spoken, for he saw now that they had all come from death to life again. Of the ship also he could have spoken; and of the business before him of unlading her and of trimming her again for the sea. But of the friendship that was already in his heart for the man with whom he had actually exchanged no syllable, there was the realisation which was as yet too dim for any thought that could become a word. He rolled up his charts and shuffled a salute, and went back to Santvoort with the news.
CHAPTER VIII
A DOZEN soldiers escorted them on their return journey, whereas there had been only four in the party that brought them up. They walked, nimble enough and tolerably comfortable, in their linen shifts and sandals.
They were received on the ship at Oita, as Adams himself says, "with weeping eyes; for it was given them to understand that I was executed long since."
The return was another link in the chain of accidents that made of Adams the big man of the castaways, the "Number One." He came back after two months with good news and good hopes and a plan, to men who had spent the time in dingy convalescence and suspense. He had seen the dismissal of the padre, while the others had brooded in the shadow of his hostility.
The Captain, Jacob Quarternak of Rotterdam, for all that survival had made him "Admiral" of the expedition, accepted whatever words came from the vitality and the reasonable hopes of his pilot.
Adams therefore was simply tumbled into command of the survivors; and Santvoort, by the sheer beefiness of his health, was tumbled into his lieutenancy.
The house ashore, for some reason or other, had been given up so that the party had been quartered, for a month, on the ship. That month of pigging it aboard and of listless hospitality to men, women and children in a daily thousand or so had made a garbage-heap of the Liefde. The sightseers were guests in the true, full local sense of the word; they brought, each one, their little gift—fruit and fish and drink, or some trifle of raiment, and each gift had shed its wrapping or its rind. (In natural compensation they had taken away, each one, any oddment of fitting, furniture or cargo that had come readily to hand.)
The only survival of discipline that Adams and Santvoort found aboard was that no one but the Captain and the Surgeon, in addition to smiling and prying guests, ever entered the cuddy.
The soldiers were enough, by their very presence, to clear the ship of the general rabble, and to keep it clear. Holding the crew aboard was another matter. It was not till Santvoort had knocked down the sailmaker that the men realised that the ship was still a ship and that there was work ahead of them.
There came an inkling among them that they were presently going home again, and with the inkling they fell to work. A cook was found among them to replace the renegade de Conning, for there had been no cooking while gifts of food in a thousand handfuls had made a surfeit and a litter.
Millet and barley and fish appeared each morning now, not a gift but a ration.
Adams and Santvoort were continually going ashore to retrieve men who had, somehow, gone before them to friends they had made among the ship's visitors. They had no difficulty in finding them; for a very lane seemed to open for them as they stepped ashore, through the crowds that smilingly awaited them; and a hundred guides led them to the house of laughter where their man was gone.
The cleaning of the ship came to an end, and the real difficulties of the position had to be faced.
Lockers had been stripped; every bight of rope, every hank of marlin was gone. There was not a stitch of canvas anywhere. The carpenter had been dealt with more exhaustively than the absent cook—for the galley still held bare utensils enough for boiling millet and fish, and could muster dishes and lids enough for serving a meal to the four officers.
Adams and Santvoort made inventories and lists; and they walked—aboard and ashore—cursing the thieves and seeking frantically for someone to whom they could put their grievance.
Wherever they went at least two of the soldiers, they noticed, sauntered after them.
The soldiers, in reply to anything the Englishman or Dutchman tried to say, had only a smile, a shaken head and shrugged shoulders. Ashore the only replies they had were invitations within houses. Children and young women stroked the hair on their calves, their forearms and their chests. The roughness of their chins was a joke beyond the expression of ordinary laughter. The two of them together were called, in great friendliness, 'The old hairy ones'; and for Adams there was always the name An-jin.
They, for their part, said much in English, in Dutch, in Portuguese and in Spanish—but the words only bounced back upon them from the flat, smiling faces. All they could find in the chatter and clatter of tongues and teeth was greeting and the everlasting joke and curiosity about their hairiness and Adams's name of "Pilot." Till one day they were addressed in Portuguese, and the sound struck them as words from the mouth of his ass had struck Balaam before them.
"Come with me—quietly," was whispered by a man who was, for a moment, nearer to them than the rest of the merry rabble at the waterside. Then, "Shushshush-shush."
They