On the morning that the boat was to sail from Yokohama we were up as soon as the sun first came through the bamboo shades. We exchanged presents with everyone in the inn and then walked away to the station, and everyone from the aristocratic mistress to the messenger boy stood waving to us as long as we could turn back to see them. Our packages and presents half filled the car. Hori had had a telegram to hurry home. The train was a through express to Kyoto and we said “sayonara” to him from the Yokohama platform.

We went to the bank and I exchanged my receipt for the envelope which held the money for my steamer ticket. In our treasury was left one last Japanese note which we had been saving as a margin. We now thought it was safely ours to spend as we might choose. We went to find some very particular incense and some very particular tea which a Japanese acquaintance had discovered and had given us the address of. We plunged almost to the limit of the note.

“Haven’t you heard that your boat has been held up forty-eight hours in Kobe?” asked the steamship agent.

We had heard no such news, but we were interested. To be able to have, when one might wish to make the choice, the gift of forty-eight hours in Japan would be one sort of a blessing. At that particular moment the prospect had complications. Until that instant our system of finance had been the pride of our hearts. We had calculated so admirably that we had retained just one yen for porters’ fees at the dock.

O-Owre-san had his return ticket. “Can’t I pay for my ticket in part by cheque?” I asked.

After consultation in the inner office the agent returned and announced, “No, that isn’t done.”

The agent and his advisers thought that if I should happen to fall overboard there might be a legal complication with my estate—if I happened to have an estate.

“Your records show,” I argued, “that my friend has crossed on your line three times. Discounting any other substantiality, at least that proves that one of us has had practice in not tumbling overside.”

Evidently my logic was at fault. From the dubious looks that came across the desk I judged that the agent was thinking that such fly-like pertinacity of sticking aboard a vessel was suspicious and unnatural in a passenger.

“Well,” said O-Owre-san as we walked away, “you’ve wondered what it would be like to be an amateur beach comber. Now is your admirable chance.”

O-Owre-san seemed to forget that he was in no better position than was I in regard to funds.

The day before we had had tea with the Premier of Japan. Now we faced forty-eight hours of starvation. Our horoscopes evidently had been cast that we were to be beach combers, the admirable chance of which O-Owre-san had suggested.

We did not deceive ourselves that our few hours of homelessness made us professionals, nevertheless we were given a picture impression of Yokohama that could only have been bought by hunger and sleeplessness. We saw the going to bed of the city, and we saw its getting up. We saw Theatre Street gay with lanterns and filled with merrymakers. Hours later we saw the lanterns go out and the waiters and waitresses come forth to crowd into the public baths. We walked through the glitter of the street which winds between the houses of the wall-imprisoned Yoshiwara district. There is but one entrance to this district—a long stone bridge. We saw that bridge again, at the hour of sunrise. It was then crowded with beggars and loathsome hangers-on, waiting to importune the exodus. Vice by grey daylight is horrible, and those brilliant palaces of the night before bulked in a row of dull and sinister ugliness in the half daylight. Back and forth we explored the streets of the city. We passed a foreign sailors’ low dive, and a toothless old woman and a leering youth grabbed at our arms and invited us in. They spoke phrases of English. There was wild laughter and music on the upper floor.

Sometimes the hours went quickly, sometimes they lingered interminably with no seeming relation between their speeding and the interest of the moment. Sometimes we were hungry and sometimes we forgot our hunger. We found a small park near the foreign settlement with benches admirable for sleeping if it had not been for the diligence of the sand fleas and the gnats. From the park we walked down along the bund and on the promenade facing the harbour we found two seats. A Japanese sailor was sitting on one.

We wished him good-evening and shared with him our cigarettes. After a time we wandered away to walk again through the streets of the bright lanterns. We had been refusing ’ricksha men for so many hours that the guild at last seemed to remember us as non-possibilities, that is, all except one man who persisted in turning up at every corner. He spoke some English and had a new suggestion for his every proposal. If ever a coolie looked theatrically villainous, it was that coolie; and furthermore, he was half-drunk from cheap sake. Eventually he discovered a companion and the two of them settled down at our heels. Whenever we hesitated they threw their ’ricksha shafts across our path. They thought that we were officers from some ship and they were counting upon our having to return before the four-o’clock watch. I do not know that officers ever do have to return at that hour, but the coolies were sure that we had such necessity. When four o’clock came they were mystified and angry. Until then they had rather amused us. We now told them to be off and we walked away into the quiet streets. They still persisted in their following. We tried indifference and we tried invective. I could see that the police at the corners were watching the procession. We might have appealed to them, but one seldom appeals to the police in a foreign land, especially in Japan, if there is any question of time to be considered. We had to take the boat the next morning. We had no desire to be ordered to report the next day at a police station; and for the matter of that, I should hardly have felt like criticizing any officer for deciding to lock us all up together. The coolies might have appealed that we had hired them and had not paid them. Anyhow, why should two foreigners be wandering around in questionable districts at such an hour of the night? If there had to be a settlement with our pair of villains, it was just as well to have it beyond the eye of the law.

Our next move was melodramatic. We drew a line across the road and when our parasites caught up we told them that they crossed that line at their peril. Just what we should have done if they had crossed the line I have no idea. We walked along pleased with the result of our ultimatum until, ten or fifteen minutes later, I happened to turn around and again saw the two men, this time without their ’rickshas.

We were now headed toward the sea front by way of the foreign sections. The buildings were absolutely dark but there was an occasional street light. If there were any watchmen they were within the walls. We had walked through the narrow streets of that district so often that we remembered the turns. We felt sure that the men could not catch up with us except from behind. We were well out on the bund before they came out of the alley that we had left. They were both carrying sticks, which looked like ’ricksha shafts, and the second man had a knife.

We walked along toward the benches where we had been sitting earlier in the night. Steamer lights were twinkling on the harbour and O-Owre-san pointed out our ship waiting to dock at sunrise. Years before I had been attacked in the streets of San Francisco, but that assault had been so sudden that there was no anticipatory excitement. Our Yokohama anticipatory reflection was the amusing idea that if the knaves should attain the triumph of searching our pockets they would have a most disheartening anti-climax after all their evening’s trouble.

Just as we reached the benches they came for us. We stepped around the first bench to break the charge. Outstretched on the bench was our Japanese sailor whom we had helped out with cigarettes. He may have been asleep, but when he jumped to his feet he was very wide awake. Without waiting for particulars he whipped out a clasp knife. We had been friends and this was a chance to even up his obligation to us. The two coolies stopped as if they had run against an invisible wire. We stood facing each other, and then, as stealthily as a great cat, the sailor began moving forward. He walked very slowly but he seemed to thirst to use his knife. Even with three to two, I felt that the coolies, half-drunken, would have tried to hold their ground if it had not been for the sailor’s uncanny deliberation. They waited for him to come no nearer. They fled. We could hear them running long after the darkness closed them in.

We tried to express our appreciation to the sailor for his interest. He made some answer which sounded as if he were bored.

One place and another we had found a little sleep in the two days but the thought of a soft, clean steamer bunk began to form itself in my brain and the first sign of the sun was truly welcome. We turned back to the city for one last long walk over the heights. The town was sleepily waking up. The streets that had been the darkest in the night were now the busiest. Our walk ended at the parcel room of the railway station where we had left our rucksacks. The boy who was sweeping out the station restaurant allowed us to shave and scrub behind a screen and make ourselves somewhat presentable for the boat.

Our luggage, which had been in storage, was on the dock waiting for us. O-Owre-san thoroughly shook the linen envelope which had so long been our treasury but the yield refused to increase beyond three silver ten-sen pieces. I once saw an Italian in Venice fee an entire hotel line with a few coppers. He accomplished the act with such graceful courtesy that seemingly the servitors were appreciative of the spirit of the giving rather than the value of the coins. I tried to distribute our pieces of silver to the porters on the dock with an air copied from my remembrance of the Italian, and the Nipponese recipients entered into the drama with sufficient make-belief to have saved our faces if it had not been for the chill in the critical eyes of two English sailors standing at the gangplank. The implication of their Anglo-Saxon hauteur was that it might be satisfying to the heathen in their darkness to weigh in with the heft of compensation such useless freight as palaver and smiles, but as for them, they belonged to a civilization preferring less manners and more substance.

As the boat swung from the pier and open water began to show, a man came running down the dock waving the copy of a cablegram. “Germany has invaded France and England may declare war,” he shouted. Yes, decidedly our days of turning back the clock were over. We were no longer ronins wandering in feudal Japan. We had left the Two-Sworded Trails and were back in the civilization of the two English sailors.

Slowly the harbour of Yokohama was curtained and disappeared behind a brightly glistening mist. I stood against the rail trying to think of America and Europe. My mind had that illusory, abnormal clearness which sometimes follows days without sleep. I stood, thinking, thinking, the first beginning of that agony of trying to add a cubit to our vision by thought.

GLOSSARY OF JAPANESE WORDS