as their tongue from ours."
Santvoort was trying to visualise a piece of fresh beef—a rib perhaps, a sirloin, or a good fillet from the rump. Adams was grappling again with the puzzle of thoughts and of ways of thinking that were as alien as the speech of sudden clicks and snaps and hisses.
To Adams the old and tired man sitting in the boat said he understood them. To Santvoort his quietness said that his parcel held beef that might be a rib, a sirloin or a fillet from the rump. Adams, too, had casually wondered what cold beef would look like, pickled but slightly in brine.
"Use the hook for holding the skiff alongside, Melchior," he said. "Leave his behind to itself." Then he called, "Come aboard, padre."
The old man scrambled through the port and took the bundle from his attendant.
Santvoort helped him up the last three steps of the companion to the deck. He relieved him of the bundle, handing to Adams the precious boat-hook; and the three of them joined the Captain and the Surgeon in the cuddy.
Santvoort unpacked the bundle.
There were three bottles of Spanish wine, oranges from the Philippines, and the beef—a roasted brisket.
"It is only a poor present, my sons," the old man said. "But it is as much as we could carry—four days of hard travelling it is from Nagasaki. It would be the merest trifle among many; but among you four it might serve to show my friendship. I would suggest that you allow your cook to bring in the customary food. Cover this with the wrapping and the Captain's cloak—so. . . . That, too, is why we cooked it for you beforehand; beef is, as it were, contraband in this country. One does not talk much of eating beef; for even believers without the old superstitions are still few."
Santvoort covered up the gift with the wrappings and the Captain's cloak and they sat squeezed round the table.
It was only from hearsay that the Captain and the Surgeon knew of the priest's fine doings before leyasu. All they had experienced of him was his persistent commiseration with them over the undoubted execution of Adams and Santvoort. Speech came more easily to them than to the other two.
"So you've got us bottled up here, padre!" the Captain said, not without the faint touch of geniality befitting a man who knows that he is beaten. "Prisoners. For how long?"
The priest slowly crossed himself again. "Your captivity is not my doing," he said. "Far otherwise. Very far otherwise. It is indeed of that that I have come to talk with you."
He paused a moment and leaned closer while the others looked at each other through the light that came from the narrow doorway, and then at him.
"My sons," he said, "in all this country—I am now your only friend."
That word "friend," with its grotesque and ironic implications, was getting a little on the nerves of Adams.
"Have you come to deliver us, then?" he sneered. "To set us free?—take us all home again?"
"Not all," said the priest quietly. "That I cannot do—for your captor is powerful. But I have come to set you free; you four who are the big and important ones. Nor can I myself take you home. But I can put you where there are ships. I can send you as far as the Moluccas. For such as you, the getting home from there would be no great matter. We will talk of it presently. First call for your skilly, my friends, and throw it quietly over the side and eat your beef and drink your wine."
The cook brought in their broth and millet-cakes and knives and mugs and a pitcher of water. Santvoort went out to tip the broth over the side and the priest sat on the locker, smiling and carving slices from the beef.
When they had sat down to it and their mugs of wine the Captain drank to the priest's good health. Then he said, "You have lied before, padre. We know that the thing you speak of is forbidden."
"Do you not know that beef also is forbidden?" was the padre's smiling answer.
They considered this.
"A month ago you would have had us killed out of hand," said Adams. "Now——" suddenly he stopped, a gobbet of the excellent meat poised on his knife-point. "Steady, Captain! Melchior! Doctor! . . . How in God's name do we know what he may not have put in this beef?"
They slowly laid down their knives. "Or in the wine, damnation take him!" Adams added, having already drained half his mug.
The priest set his great pale hand on the pilot's shoulder and laughed. For some reason or other they believed in his laugh and went on eating again even before he had said: "Do not be afraid. If harm came to you from my beef or my wine, I would not reach Nagasaki alive. As for the sheer doing of such a deed, could I not a hundred times have poisoned the lot of you even before you went up to the court? Believe me, the law of this country is a law of iron."
"It beats me," said Adams, and he fell into thought. "But if you are so frightened of the Emperor's wishes, how can you think of getting us out of the country? He has forbidden it, as he has forbidden murder."
"I would not get you out of the country, my son," the priest said. "It is well known already that your wish is to go. And so if you went—well—it is you who would be the lawbreakers."
He shrugged his round shoulders and smiled upon them. "If you went, the doing of it would be yours—not mine. Any little facilities I might give you would not, in fact, be traced; the Emperor and his emissaries are busy at the moment with greater affairs than the departure of a few unwilling guests."
"And what are these facilities of yours?" asked Adams. It was the curious fact that he again had become the spokesman of the others. His Portuguese was slower and more cumbersome than theirs. His forwardness was again determined by trivial accidents; their mouths, at the moment, were full of beef or wine, or their minds were jumping ahead of the priest's words, or lagging behind them. For no other reason Adams was the one to say, "What can you do?"
"The nights are moonless," said the priest. "Presently we shall part in obvious friendship. To-morrow night I will send a skiff with presents for you. Four men will come aboard carrying them." He paused. "Four men will leave the ship." He bent nearer to them. "They will be bigger men than the four who come aboard—but my boatmen will answer any questions asked by your guard on board. The distance from here to the shore is nothing to swimmers like the four who will bring your parcels."
Among the thoughts of his four listeners there was a quick computation of chances; the computation of chances had for long been the habit of their daily life.
"And then," said Adams, "what happens?"
"Another boat," said the priest, "and other boatmen will take you by water to Nagasaki. In Nagasaki we have craft of our own, and a certain freedom. Here there is a tally of all the boats that can float; but in Nagasaki brothers of mine will see to it that you board a soma for the Moluccas."
"And in the Moluccas," suggested Adams, "the cutting of our throats would be a simple, harmless matter; there is no Emperor to protect us in the Moluccas."
"My son," said the priest, sadly shaking his head. "I am no murderer. I seek only to do the work before me."
"The work before you was once to get us stuck up on crosses."
"My work," said the priest, "was to remove you from blocking the way of the faith."
"Throat-slitting would surely achieve that, as Mr. Adams suggested." It was the Captain who spoke this time. "You cannot get away from that."
"If you would understand," said the priest, "I will explain to you. My sons—if you would only see-" He was the old man again, tired and a little frail for all his bulk, appealing to them so humbly and so earnestly that they listened.
"Here, in this field," he went on, "you are the enemies— not of me, for you also are men and the children of God—but of the faith, for you are blind. I speak plainly that you may believe. For half a century we have laboured in this field; and our labours have been blessed. The seed of truth has prospered and the harvest has been great. But you, in your blindness . . . My sons, if you, too, had the faith-"
"Perhaps,"