CHAPTER I—Eastern Seas

My first cruise as a midshipman in the navy of the United States began a short month too late for me to share in the honors of the Mexican War. In other words, I came in at the foot of the service, with all the grades above me fresh-stocked with comparatively young and vigorous officers. As a consequence, the rate of promotion was so slow that the Summer of 1851 found me, at the age of twenty-four, still a middie, with my lieutenancy ever receding, like a will-o’-the-wisp, into the future.

Had I chosen a naval career through necessity, I might have continued to endure. But to the equal though younger heir of one of the largest plantations in South Carolina, the pay of even a post captain would have been of small concern. It is, therefore, hardly necessary to add that I had been lured into the service by the hope of winning fame and glory.

2 That my choice should have fallen upon the navy rather than the army may have been due to the impulse of heredity. According to family traditions and records, one of my ancestors was the famous English seaman Will Adams, who served Queen Elizabeth in the glorious fight against the Spanish Armada and afterwards piloted a Dutch ship through the dangerous Straits of Magellan and across the vast unchartered expanse of the Pacific to the mysterious island empire, then known as Cipango or Zipangu.

History itself verifies that wonderful voyage and the still more wonderful fact of my ancestor’s life among the Japanese as one of the nobles and chief counsellors of the great Emperor Iyeyasu. So highly was the advice of the bold Englishman esteemed by the Emperor that he was never permitted to return home. For many years he dwelt honorably among that most peculiar of Oriental peoples, aiding freely the few English and Dutch who ventured into the remote Eastern seas. He had aided even the fanatical Portuguese and Spaniards, who, upon his arrival, had sought to have him and his handful of sick and starving shipmates executed as pirates. So it was he lived and died a Japanese noble, and was buried with all honor.

With the blood of such a man in my veins, it is not strange that I turned to the sea. Yet it is3 no less strange that three years in the service should bring me to an utter weariness of the dull naval routine. Notable as were the achievements of our navy throughout the world in respect to exploration and other peaceful triumphs, it has ever surprised me that in the absence of war and promotion I should have lingered so long in my inferior position.

In war the humiliation of servitude to seniority may be thrust from thought by the hope of winning superior rank through merit. Deprived of this opportunity, I could not but chafe under my galling subjection to the commands of men never more than my equals in social rank and far too often my inferiors.

The climax came after a year on the China Station, to which I had obtained an assignment in the hope of renewed action against the arrogant Celestials. Disappointed in this, and depressed by a severe spell of fever contracted at Honkong, I resigned the service at Shanghai, and took passage for New York, by way of San Francisco and the Horn, on the American clipper Sea Flight.

We cleared for the Sandwich Islands August the twenty-first, 1851. The second noon found us safe across the treacherous bars of the Yangtse-Kiang and headed out across the Eastern Sea, the southwest monsoon bowling us along at a round twelve knots.

4 The double lassitude of my convalescence and the season had rendered me too indifferent to inquire about my fellow-passengers. We were well under way before I learned that, aside from the officers and crew, I was the only person aboard ship. In view of the voyage of from five to six months’ duration which lay before me, this discovery roused me to the point of observing the characters of the skipper and his mates. Much to my chagrin, I found that all were Yankees of the most pronounced nasal type.

As a late naval officer no less than as a Southern gentleman, I could not humble myself to social intercourse with the bucko mates. Fortunately Captain Downing was somewhat less unbearable, and had the good taste to share my interest in the mysterious islands of Japan, as well as my detestation of China. Even as the low, dreary coast of Kiangsu faded from view in our wake, we attained to a cordial exchange of congratulations over the fact that we were at last quit of the filth and fantasies of the Celestial Empire.

As we wheeled about from the last glance astern, Downing pointed over the side with a jerk of his thumb. “Look at that dirty flood, Mr. Adams. Just like a China river to try to turn the whole sea China yellow! Conceited as John Chinaman himself!”

“Give the devil his due,” I drawled. “Biggest5 nation on earth, and close upon the biggest river.”

“Aye, and thank Providence, every last one of their three hundred million pigtails lie abaft my taffrail, and every drop of that foul flood soon to lose itself in clean blue water!” He stared ahead, combing his fingers through his bushy whiskers, his shrewd eyes twinkling with satisfaction. “Aye! blue water—the whole breadth of the Pacific before us, and Asia astern.”

“Not all Asia,” I corrected. “We have yet to clear the Loo Choos.”

“The Loo Choos,” he repeated. “Queer people, I guess. They are said to be a kind of Chinamen.”

“It’s hard to tell,” I replied. “They may be Chinese. Yet some say the islands are subject to Japan.”

“To Japan? Then they’ve got good reason to be queer!” He paced across the deck and back, his jaw set and eyes keen with sudden resolve. “By ginger, I’ll do it this passage, sir, danged if I won’t! I’ve been wanting to see something of the Japanese islands ever since I came out to the China seas as a cabin-boy, and that’s fifty years gone.”

“You’d run out of your course for a glimpse of the Japanese coast?” I exclaimed, no less incredulous than delighted.

“More than a glimpse, Mr. Adams. Van6 Diemen Strait is a shorter course than the Loo Choo passage, and with this weather—”

“Midst of the typhoon season,” I cut in with purposeful superciliousness of tone.

The captain of a clipper is as sensitive to any aspersions on his seamanship as the grayest master of navigation in the navy. Downing bit snappily. “Typhoon be damned! I navigated a whaler through uncharted seas twenty odd years, and never lost my ship. I’ll take the Sea Flight through Van Diemen Strait, blow or calm, sir.”

“No doubt,” I murmured with ambiguous suavity.

He scowled, puzzled at my smile. “You naval officers! Commanded my first ship before you were born—before I had need of a razor. What’s more, I’m third owner in this clipper, and I’ve discretion over my course. The skipper who carries the first cargo out of a Japanese port is going to get the cream, and I’ve an idee the Japs are loosening up a bit. I’m going to put into Kagoshima Bay, where the old Morrison tried to land the castaway Japs in ’thirty-seven.”

“She was fired upon most savagely by the soldiers of the Prince of Satsuma,” I replied. “Why not try Nagasaki?”

“Nagasaki?—Deshima!” he rumbled. “I’m7 no Dutchman or yellow Chinee, to be treated like a dog. What’s more, it’s too far up the west coast. No! I’ll chance Kagoshima. That Satsuma king or mandarin, whatever he is, may have changed his mind since the Morrison, or there may be a new one now, with more liberal idees.”

“Since you’re resolved upon it, skipper, I must confess I have reasons of my own to be pleased with your plan,” I said, and at his interested glance, I told him somewhat in detail of my daring ancestor Will Adams, the first Englishman ever to reach the Land of the Rising Sun and the only European ever made a Japanese noble.

“H’m. Married a Japanese wife, and left children by her,” commented Downing, and he grinned broadly. “I must ask leave for you to land and look up your heathen kin.”

“You forget yourself, sir,” I caught him up. “Be kind enough hereafter to refrain from impertinence when speaking of persons related to me.”

He stared in astonishment. “Well, I’ll be durned! Two hundred years and more since your forefather died, you said—”

“None the less,” I insisted sharply, “my cousins are my cousins, sir. If there are any of my ancestor’s Japanese descendants now living, they are related to me, however remote may be the8 degree. Therefore they are entitled to be spoken of with respect.”

“Well, I’ll swan!” he muttered. “No offence, Mr. Adams.”

I bowed my acceptance of his uncouth apology, but maintained my dignity. “As I have said, sir, my ancestor was ennobled by the great Emperor Iyeyasu. Heathen or not, rest assured that his Japanese descendants, if any survive, are at the least gentlefolk.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” he grunted. “You’ll soon have a chance to inquire. I’m going to take my ship up Kagoshima Bay, fog, shine, or blow.”

He turned on his heel, and ordered the helmsman to put the ship’s head due east. I went below in a glow of pleasant anticipation. There was no mistaking the look in Downing’s face. Nothing could now shake his stubborn resolve. I was to see the mysterious Cipango of Marco Polo and Mendez Pinto, the Iappan of my ancestor,—the land that for almost two and a half centuries had shut itself in from all communication with the wide world other than through the severely restricted trade with the Dutch and Chinese at Nagasaki.

9

CHAPTER II—In Kagoshima Bay

Dawn of the third day found us ten miles off the north shore of the small volcanic island that stands second in the entrance to Van Diemen Strait. The lurid glare reflected from its crater into the ascending clouds of smoke had served as a beacon during the last hours of darkness. Daylight confirmed the calculations of our position by the sight of the beautiful smoking cone of Horner’s Peak, lying twenty-five or thirty miles to the northeast on the southern extremity of Satsuma, and the rugged peninsula of Osumi, ending in the sharp point of Cape Satanomi, a like distance to the eastward.

The moment our landfall was clear in the growing light, the Sea Flight came around and headed straight between the two peninsulas. A run of three hours before the monsoon, over the bluest of white-capped seas, brought us well up into the entrance of Kagoshima Bay, with Horner’s Peak a few miles off on the port beam, and the bold, verdant hills of Osumi to starboard. Close along each shore the sea broke on half-10submerged rocks, but the broad channel showed no signs of reefs or shoals, and Downing stood boldly in, without shortening sail.

Having none of the responsibility of navigating the ship, I was able to loll upon the rail and enjoy to the utmost the magnificent scenery of the bay. On either shore the mountainous coast trended off to the northward, an emerald setting to the sapphire bay, with the lofty broken peak of a smoking volcano towering precipitously at the head of the thirty-mile stretch of land-girded waters. Far inland still loftier peaks cast dim outlines through the summery haze.

Every valley and sheltered mountain-side along the bay showed heavy growths of pines and other trees, among which were scattered groups of straw-thatched, high-peaked cottages. Many of the slopes were under cultivation and terraced far up towards the crests, while every cove was fringed with the straggling hovels of a fishing village.

In every direction the bay was dotted with the square white sails of fishing smacks and small junks,—vessels that differed from Chinese craft in the absence of bamboo ribs to the sails and still more in the presence of the yawning port which gaped in their sterns. I concluded that this extraordinary build was due to the Japanese policy of keeping the population at home, for11 certainly none but a madman could have dreamed of undertaking any other than a coastwise cruise in one of these unseaworthy vessels. Another peculiarity was that not one of the craft showed a trace of paint.

The majestic apparition of the Sea Flight in their secluded haven seemed to fill the Japanese sailors with wildest panic. One and all, their craft scattered before her like flocks of startled waterfowl, for the most part running inshore for shelter at the nearest villages or behind the verdant islets that rose here and there above the rippling blue waters. A few stood up the bay, probably to spread the alarm, but the clipper easily overhauled and passed the swiftest.

By noon, though the wind had fallen to a light breeze, we had sailed some thirty miles up the bay and were within three miles of the volcano, which stood out, apparently on an island, with a deep inlet running in on either side. On the Satsuma shore, across the mouth of the western inlet, our glasses had long since brought to view the gray expanse of Kagoshima, rising to a walled hill crowned with large buildings, whose quaint, curved roofs and many-storied pagoda towers recalled China.

All along the bay shores, great bells were booming the alarm, and crowds of people rushed about the villages in wild disorder, while the junks and smacks12 continued to fly before us as if we were pirates. Smiling grimly at the commotion raised by his daring venture, Downing shortened sail and stood into the opening of the western inlet until we could make out clearly with the naked eye the general features of the city and its citadel.

So far the lead had given us from forty to eighty fathoms. When we found thirty fathoms with good holding ground, Downing decided that caution was the better part of curiosity, and gave orders to let go anchor. Hardly had we swung about to our cable when a large half-decked clipper-built boat bore down upon us from the city with the boldness of a hawk swooping upon a swan. The little craft was driven by the long sculls of a number of naked brown oarsmen in the stern. Amidships and forward swarmed twenty or thirty soldiers, clad in fantastic armor of brass and lacquered leather, and bearing antique muskets and matchlocks.

In the stern of the guard-boat fluttered a small flag with the design of a circled white cross, while from the staff on the prow a great tassel of silky filaments trailed down almost to the surface of the water. Beneath the tassel stood two men with robes of gray silk and mushroom-shaped hats tied to their chins with bows of ribbon. I should have taken them for priests had not each carried13 a brace of swords thrust horizontally through his sash-like belt.

At a sign from the older of these officers, the boat drove in alongside the starboard quarter. As Downing and I stepped to the rail and gazed down upon them, the younger officer flung aboard a bamboo stick that had been cleft at one end to hold a piece of folded paper. Downing spun about to pick up the message. But I, calling to mind the reputed courtesy of the Japanese, was seized with a whim to test their reputation in this respect, and bowed profoundly to the officers, addressing them with Oriental gravity: “Gentlemen, permit me to request you to come aboard and favor me with your company at dinner.”

Together the two swordsmen returned my bow, slipping their hands down their thighs to their knees and bending until their backs were horizontal. After a marked pause they straightened, their olive faces aglow with polite smiles, and the younger man astonished me by replying in distinct though oddly accented English: “Honorable sir, thangs, no. To-morrow, yes. You wait to-morrow?”

Before I could answer, his companion muttered what seemed to be a grave remonstrance. He was replying in tones as liquid and musical as Italian when Downing swung back beside me.

14 “Look here, Mr. Adams,” he grumbled, thrusting out a sheet of crinkly yellow paper. “Just like their heathen impudence!”

I hastened to read the message, which was written, in the Chinese manner, with an ink-brush instead of a quill, but the words were in English, as legible and brief as they were to the point:

“You bring our people shipwrecked? Yes? Take them Nagasaki. You come trade? Yes? Go. Cannon fire.”

Downing scowled upon the bizarre soldiers and their commanders with contemptuous disapproval, and pointing to the message, bawled roughly: “Ahoy, there, you yellow heathen, this ain’t any way to treat a peaceful merchantman. Must take us for pirates.”

The younger officer looked up, with his polite smile, and asked in a placid tone: “You come why?”

“Trade, of course. What else d’ you reckon?”

“Trade? You go Nagasaki. Thangs.”

“Nagasaki!” growled Downing. “Take me for a Dutchman? You put back, fast as you can paddle, and tell your mandarin, or whatever he calls himself, that here’s an American clipper lying in his harbor, ready to buy or barter for tea, chinaware, or silks.”

“Thangs. You go Nagasaki—you go Nagasaki,”15 reiterated the officer, smiling more politely than ever, and signing us down the bay with a graceful wave of his small fan. “No get things aboard. You go Nagasaki. Ships no can load.”

“That’s easy cured,” replied Downing. “Tell your mandarin I’ll get under way first thing to-morrow and run in close as our draught will let us. If we can’t come ’longside his bund, we can lighter cargo in sampans.”

The officers exchanged quick glances, and the younger one repeated his affable order with unshaken placidity: “You go Nagasaki. Thangs.”

Without waiting for further words, both bowed, and the older one signed to the scullers with his fan. The men thrust off and brought their graceful craft about with admirable dexterity. Again their officers bent low in response to my parting bow, and the long sculls sent the boat skimming cityward, across the sparkling water, at racing speed.

Downing nodded after them and permitted his hard mouth to relax in a half grin. “That’s the way to talk to heathen, Mr. Adams. No begging favors; just straight-for’a’d offer to trade. You’ll see to-morrow, sir.”

At this moment the impatient steward announced dinner, and we hastened below with appetites sharpened by pleasant anticipations. The more we discussed the courteous speech16 and manners of our visitors the more we became convinced that they had meant nothing by their notice to leave, but would soon return with a cordial assent to our proposals.

To our surprise, the afternoon wore away without a second visit either from the guard-boat or any other craft. Junk after junk and scores of fishing smacks sailed past us cityward, but all alike held off beyond hail. Still more noteworthy was the fact that no vessel came out of the inlet or across from the city.

At last, shortly before sunset, we sighted four guard-boats, armed with swivels, bearing down upon us from the nearest point of the city. Our first thought was that we were to be attacked as wantonly as had been the Morrison and other ships that had sought to open communication with the Japanese. But at half a cable’s length they veered to starboard and began to circle around the Sea Flight in line ahead, forming a cordon. It was not difficult to divine that their purpose was to prevent us from making any attempt at landing.

That they intended to maintain their patrol throughout the night became evident to me when, after lingering over two bottles of my choice Madeira with the skipper, I withdrew from the supper-table to my stateroom. The cabin air being close and sweltering and my blood somewhat17 heated from the wine, I turned down my reading lamp and leaned out one of my stern windows. Refreshed by the cool puffs of the night breeze that came eddying around the ship’s quarters as she rocked gently on a slight swell, I soon began to heed my surroundings with all the alertness of a sailor in a hostile port.