and at others he would break out in cheery ribaldry.
"One at a time, then," he admitted sulkily. "For that is all that even you can say. And you've had your own already— for eight years or ten, before we sailed, you'd had your house and your wife—so it would not matter if you were now shut in a paper house with a dozen women all as beautiful—when your eye has once got adjusted to them—as a flower or butterflies. You could sleep on a bag of money and dream richly. But you, who do not deserve it—"
"Make no mistake, Melchior," Adams said quietly. "There is no frolicking with the women in my house." He said it only out of kindness. Melchior, for all his austere and able handling of any rabble aboard a ship, had fallen into many a silly scrape ashore. It could well have escaped whatever machinery of perception functioned in his square skull that Magdalena and Bikuni San were a different story altogether from the flowers and butterflies in a kite-maker's jolly household.
"We could buy some presents!" Santvoort exclaimed with sudden inspiration. "Stuffs for the women to make gowns, and some gay combs. Something for the children; and wine and some confections. The men think well of wine and feasting, Will."
"Aye, we could," said Adams. "We could also throw the money into the harbour. For that is what we should be doing —until we have learnt something of the language, and of the money's value. You could easily pay the price of a house for a stoup of wine to-day, and be none the wiser."
"I'll go out with my host," Santvoort said brightly. "I'll let him buy."
"Note down whatever you can, then," said Adams. "I've a point of lead in the house. It takes well on their paper."
Santvoort went with him to the house for the lead and the paper, and then went shopping with his host.
Adams went in, with his weighted skirts, to Magome.
CHAPTER XIX
MAGOME, in the living-room, waved him to a mat. Adams squatted with a thud and clatter of his money.
The old man's forehead, considered as a feature of his face, was a wedge whose one side was the line of his eyebrows, and the other the old deep scar. One eyebrow was complete, and vivaciously cocked; the other was a little tuft that disappeared into the cavity which was the scar's end. The wedge was all wrinkles, and above it, on the scar, rested the shaved dome which curved away to the tight, stiff top-knot.
"Condescend honourably to sit," said he, the tough old hands resting, as ever, on the sword-hilts.
There was much, he knew, that he should have said; but he knew also that it was in him to say much that should not be allowed to escape in words; so he was not sorry at the soldier's luck that for the moment held his tongue or stopped the ears of the Needle-watcher.
Adams, however, had nought but regret for his dumbness. He knew well enough, already, how glib and easy was the process in this country by which anything could become a present; and it came into his mind as he thanked his smiling host for the hospitality in his gesture and smile, that steps must be taken to prevent any misunderstanding in the transaction that was about to take place.
He solemnly untied the first bundle of great coins in his skirt, keeping it sheltered between his knees. He had got some sense of value from the beaming pleasure of Mitsu as he had appropriated and tied up, on his own judgment, three good tael from the leather sack when the Captain had broken the Shogun's seal and held the open mouth towards the soldier. Forty-three tael, half a dozen mace and some candereen were the Pilot's share of the remaining coins, and he had decided that five tael would be a suitable and a handsome gift to his host. He counted the five slowly out from between his knees into his hand. Making a very distinct, ceremonious gesture of it, he held the money out to Magome. The old man snatched his hands away from their perches and tucked them into his sleeves tightly against his paunch. Obviously, as he smiled and chattered, he could not think of any such thing as the Pilot was suggesting. He was shocked and surprised, though touched and delighted, that the Contemplator of the Needle should have had a thought so generous towards his unworthy self. . . . Adams was satisfied that his own point was clear. Further ceremonial in the matter became superfluous and he merely shoved his hand forward, saying, "Come on, man. Take it!"
No. It was too much for the soldier. He still chattered and objected and withdrew himself from the brilliant and magnificent glare of such generosity; but—perhaps—since——
He withdrew one hand from the folds of the sleeve and coyly, very coyly, stayed the pressure of Adams and took just one coin. It was the least he could do in the face of the overbearing and most amiable insistence of his guest.
"Four more," said Adams. "Here they are."
It was too much. Altogether too much for the astonished warrior. Yielding—since the breast-plate of steel that will turn aside the arrow of an enemy is softer than a silken doublet against the kindness of a guest and friend—yielding, he took a second tael as though it were the most delicate blossom from a fragrant garden.
"Come on, man!" said Adams again. "I mean it. Here they are!"
Protesting, Magome took a third; and protesting further, a fourth. Magically they disappeared about his pocketless person; but at the fifth he absolutely stuck. Adams knew, somehow, that this was indeed the end of it, just as he had known that all the rest had been coquetry. His own attempt at impressive gesture and ceremonial faded utterly in the light of Magome's next performance.
Magome stood and spoke.
There was nothing now in the world to curb an eloquence that had made of him, a quarter of a century earlier, an exile hunted from his own province with a cleft scalp and a cracked skull; for his present listener could hear nothing, but could only see the gestures.
And in them he saw the magnificence of a Lord, the swagger of a ruffian, the austerity of a priest, the gaiety of a boy, the tenderness of a mother and the fealty of a friend.
Adams in turn had to do something. Getting up on his knees, to leave his shirt and its burden undisturbed on the floor, he took Magome's hand in his and shook it.
But he had more to do and he set about doing it. He sat, not as Magome sat on his heels, but flat on his buttocks with his legs stretched out in front of him. Between them he untied the second knot of money, adding it to the first one. He counted the tael into three heaps of ten each and one of nine, setting them in a row at his side. Next to them he set four of the six mace. The remaining two of these and the odd candereen he stuffed carefully into his sash. Then he looked about him. Seeing nothing that could be of the service he required, he removed the few coins he had placed in his sash and tied them again in the skirt of his robe and unwound his sash. Spreading it on the floor he wrapped it slowly over and over round the cylinder made by his thirty-nine tael and four mace. By kneeling over them and patting them, and patting his chest, he cleared any vestige of doubt that could have lingered in the mind of a half-wit as to the ownership of that cylinder. Then he went to the writing-box in the corner of the room and took a sheet of paper and the writing-brush. On the paper he made thirty-nine large strokes and four small ones. He went through a performance of impressive failure in an attempt to push the cylinder into the writing-box, which was obviously too small for it. He looked about the room in search of some other possible receptacle; but the room held, at the moment, nothing but mats, the writing-box and a screen. He indicated the possibility of a cupboard in the wall and Magome smiled, and scuttled away from the room. He returned with a small chest—a sheer slab of polished wood that showed neither join nor lock nor hinges. Setting it down upon the floor, obscuring Adams's view of it with his stooping body and hanging sleeves, he did whatever was necessary to release the lid. He turned to Adams for the money. Adams very solemnly handed him the paper and the writing-brushes. The old man counted the marks, large and small. Below them he wrote his initials or his signature—smiling his approval of the astuteness of the depositor—and handed the receipt back to Adams.
They laid the cylinder on the wrappings that covered whatever other treasures the chest already held, and he pressed the lid back into position.
He took Adams with him to replace the chest under the floor-boards in the room where his sleeping-mat was spread.
He