Richard Blaker

Needle-Watcher


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words came slowly from leyasu, slowly and deliberately from Mitsu. Interpretership was a trust sacred in the hands of any man of honour. It was an art also, whereby the smile and gentleness or the frowning anger of the principal became at once the smile or the frown of his interpreter.

      Mitsu smiled and spoke gently. "When the heart of man is torn between two desires, An-jin, his mind is without a friend. It waits only on the issue of a fight between two enemies. Of these, even the victor emerges weakened by the combat—and is a poor friend. A man in doubt is a man in fetters. Therefore be without doubt. Your ship, An-jin, is not to sail. Not yet."

      Adams said, "Enough of this nonsense of buying, and guests, and friendship, then. You have got us. Do as you will. Steal the ordnance. Steal the whole damned ship—cargo and all; but don't talk of pirates and robbers again. Or friends."

      The answer came, smoothly and gently. "Beware of anger, Pilot. For, as doubt is a shackle upon the limbs of a man, so is anger a blindness in his eye."

      "And thieving is thieving," said Adams, "whatever else you may call it. You say you will buy our ordnance?—but of what use is money to us if we may not buy the things that will put our ship to sea? It is as though you gave us no money—if we may not buy with it what we want."

      "Money can buy much besides fittings for a ship."

      "But we want no other things," said Adams.

      "The fault then is in you," said leyasu. "Not in the money. See how a man in doubt is fettered; he may not even move his hand for the spending of money."

      "Oh—take the pieces," said Adams. "But it is by no transaction of buying or selling that you get them from me. They are not mine. I am the pilot, not the Admiral. If you would deal, honestly, it is with him you must deal—the captain. It is nothing to me. I only take his orders."

      "And thus you are rid of doubt!" The words came with laughter—not laughter at a man before company which is an insult equal to a spitting in his face; but the laughter of a friend for a friend. "There is no action freer from doubt than an obedience to orders."

      Adams said, "If he will sell them, well and good."

      "And you?" said Ieyasu. "Will you tell him to sell them? As you told him not to break faith with me and sail with the priest?"

      "All I told him then was that I myself would not go with the padre," said Adams. His anger had, somehow, abated; but he was still ready to disagree upon details.

      "Did you not realise that it would have been the only way of going?" This was cajolery, not argument.

      "Aye," said Adams. "I suppose I did."

      "So there is no doubt in you." Ieyasu went on quietly. "This talk of going is only talk; and you will stay—undoubting, as my guest in this inconsiderable city."

      "Aye," said Adams. "It looks mighty like it. For here, I suppose, are not even priests and rascal Spaniards to aid us."

      "That is true," said Ieyasu. "There come no other foreigners here. All the men here are mine."

      "Like our ordnance," said Adams.

      "Of a metal 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