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-submerged 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, for 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 smacks 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 carried 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. “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,” 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 speech 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 somewhat 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.

The night was moonless and partly overcast, but the pitch darkness served only to make clearer the beacon fires which blazed along the coast so far as my circle of vision extended. No beacons had been fired immediately about Kagoshima, but the city was aglow with a soft illumination of sufficient radiance to bring out the black outlines of the guard-boats whenever they passed between me and the shore in their slow circling of the ship. The booming of the bells, however, had ceased, and the only sounds that broke the hot, damp stillness of the night were the lapping of ripples alongside and the low creaking of the ship’s rigging.

An hour passed and I still lolled half out of my window, puffing a Manila cheroot, when I heard a slight splash directly below me. It was a sound such as might be made by a leaping fish, but in Eastern waters life often depends on instant vigilance against treachery. I drew back on the second to grasp a revolver and extinguish the lamp. Within half a minute I was back again at my window, peering warily down into the blackness under the ship’s stern. There seemed to be a blot on the phosphorescent water.

“Whoever you are,” I said in a low tone, “sheer off until daylight, or I will fire.”

The response was an unmistakable sigh of relief, followed by an eager whisper: “Tojin sama—honorable foreigner, only one man come.”

Almost at the first word I knew that my visitor was the younger officer of the guard-boat.

“You come alone?” I demanded. “What for?”

“Make still, honorable foreigner!” he cautioned. “Ometsuke hear.”

“Ometsuke?”

“Watchers—spies.”

“You’ve slipped through the guard-boats on a secret visit!” I whispered, curiosity fast overcoming my caution. “Why do you come?”

“To go in ship, honorable sir,—England, ’Merica, five continents go—no stop. In boat to pay, gold is.”

For a moment astonishment held me mute. Who had ever before heard of a Japanese voluntarily leaving his own shores? Many as had been picked up by whalers and clippers in the neighboring seas, I knew of no instance where the rescued men had not been either wrecked or blown too far out to sea to be able to navigate their miserable junks into a home port. The thought flashed upon me that the man might be a criminal. Only the strongest of motives could have impelled him to seek to break the inflexible law of his country against foreign travel. But the memory of his smiling, high-bred face was against the supposition of guilt.

He broke in upon my hesitancy with an irresistible appeal: “Tojin sama, you no take me? One year I wait to board a black ship and go the five continents.”

“Stand by,” I answered. “I’ll drop you a line. But bear in mind, no treachery, or I’ll blow you to kingdom come!”

“Honorable sir!” he murmured, in a tone of such surprise and reproach as to sweep away my last doubt.

Having no line handy, I whipped the bedclothes from my berth and knotted the silken coverlet to one of the stout linen sheets. The latter I made fast to a handle of my sea-chest, and lowered the coverlet through the cabin window, exposing outboard as little as possible of the white sheet.

“Stand by,” I whispered downward. “Here’s your line.”

In a moment I felt a gentle tugging at the end of the line, followed by a soft murmur: “Honorable sir, pleased to haul.”

Though puzzled, I hauled in on the line, to which something of light weight had been made fast. The mystery was soon solved. The end of the line brought into my grasp two longish objects. A touch told me they were sheathed swords. My visitor had proved his faith by first sending up his weapons.

I cleared the line and dropped it down again, with a cordial word of invitation: “Come aboard! Can you climb?”

“I climb, tojin sama,” he whispered back.

There was a short pause, and then the line taughtened. He came up with seamanlike quickness and agility. His form appeared dimly below me as he swung up, hand over hand. I reached out and helped him draw himself in through the window. Pushing him aside, I sought to jerk in my line. It taughtened with a heavy tug.

“What’s this?” I exclaimed. “You made fast to your boat. It should have been cast adrift.”

“Boat loose is,” he replied, with unfailing suavity.

“The line is fast,” I retorted.

I felt his hands on the sheet, and he leaned past me out of the window.

“Your dunnage, of course!” I muttered, and, regretful of my impatience, I fell to hauling with him.

One good heave cleared our load from the boat, which was left free to drift up the harbor with wind and tide. The thought that it might be sighted and overhauled by the guard-boat patrol quickened my pull at the line. A few more heaves brought up to the window a cylindrical bundle or bale, which the Japanese grasped and drew inboard before I could lend a hand.

My visitor was aboard, dunnage and all, and, so far as I could tell, he had not been detected either by the men of the guard-boats or the watch above us on the poop.