Illustrated chapter headingCHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER NINE
Mousmé is better.
At last, after weary and anxious days of waiting and watching, the crisis is past. From that mysterious land, whose borders so often touch ours in sleep and illness, in which Mousmé had almost set foot, my little wife has returned. A frail ghost of her former bright self. One who looks as though she had seen visions.
She seems more fairy-like than ever, sitting out under the verandah, wrapped up in an elaborate dressing-gown of silver-grey silk with a delicate rose-pink lining. She doesn’t look a whit older—Japanese women never appear so till they are quite old—only more like some toy woman taken bodily from off a screen or jar decoratedby an artist drawing his inspiration from models of the highest types.
There seems something almost unreal in the slight figure in its quaint Eastern dress, and the dainty ways that are returning to her one by one with the strength which comes back so slowly.
Oka’s wife is delighted. She is very fond of the little mistress, who is so gay and childlike and amiable. I shall be sorry when the time comes for us to leave old Oka, with his ugly, amiable, yellow face, and his wife, who is, as are many of the lower-class women, really more than passably good-looking, though verging upon forty.
We sit out almost all day long; and when I am obliged to leave Mousmé to attend to business in the town, Oka’s wife sits within call, and Mousmé looks at the pictures in the illustrated papers and magazines Lou has from time to time sent me;or pores over a tattered copy of a rudimentary English spelling-book and grammar combined, which Chen Yo, the publisher of the principal paper, put aside for me as a great curiosity which he had bought one day.
Mousmé is learning English well. Her accent is still peculiar, of course, though her vocabulary is greatly extended. I talk to her as much as I can, for soon English will be the only language she will hear.
These are ever-to-be-remembered days, spent in my Japanese home overlooking the wonderful garden, full of brilliance of flower, earth, life and sky. I smoke, and Mousmé plays her guitar; and she sings in a voice into which love and patience have translated greater harmony and sweetness than any other woman’s voice that I have heard during the last four years—
“What shall I sing to thee, my love?In the garden where the moonbeams play,And pipe the nightingale and dove,And plash the fountain’s silver spray.“What shall I bring to thee, my own?Visions of heaven’s mansions fair;Never had king a truer throneThan my heart’s casket rich and rare.”
“What shall I sing to thee, my love?In the garden where the moonbeams play,And pipe the nightingale and dove,And plash the fountain’s silver spray.“What shall I bring to thee, my own?Visions of heaven’s mansions fair;Never had king a truer throneThan my heart’s casket rich and rare.”
“What shall I sing to thee, my love?In the garden where the moonbeams play,And pipe the nightingale and dove,And plash the fountain’s silver spray.
“What shall I sing to thee, my love?
In the garden where the moonbeams play,
And pipe the nightingale and dove,
And plash the fountain’s silver spray.
“What shall I bring to thee, my own?Visions of heaven’s mansions fair;Never had king a truer throneThan my heart’s casket rich and rare.”
“What shall I bring to thee, my own?
Visions of heaven’s mansions fair;
Never had king a truer throne
Than my heart’s casket rich and rare.”
“Sing on, little Mousmé; there are other verses of your little love-song,” I say.
But she is tired, and, unconsciously like a Europeanprima donna, only sings the last two lines over again—
“Never had king a truer throneThan my heart’s casket rich and rare.”
“Never had king a truer throneThan my heart’s casket rich and rare.”
“Never had king a truer throneThan my heart’s casket rich and rare.”
“Never had king a truer throne
Than my heart’s casket rich and rare.”
“True, Mousmé, true,” I say, half to myself, as the song loses itself in the air. But she catches the words, and smiles.
The wet season is coming on, alas! before I can leave, and our evenings beneath the verandah will be less frequent. It is not nearly so pleasant indoors, but thedamp air is bad for Mousmé. So we play Japanese draughts, and talk of England.
Sometimes Kotmasu comes in. He is convinced at last of thebona-fidesof my marriage, and is as profuse in his apologies for ever having doubted the success of my experiment, as he was with his lugubrious predictions that it would never succeed.
We are always glad to see him; for since Mousmé’s illness I have been into the tea-houses, and even the town itself, very little. We hear gossip from my queer mother-in-law, but it is usually only achronique scandaleuseof the doings of thegeishas, of her friends, and last, though by no means least, of her enemies, half of whom I do not even know by name.
Kotmasu, on the other hand, has always some scrap of more or less reliable European news, which, if it does nothing else, serves as a peg on which to hang a reminiscence, or an echo to awaken old memories of Western men and things.
The evenings we spend together are far from being uninteresting; and Mousmé, who has picked up the art of conversation wonderfully, is delighted to intrude her quaint ideas upon us. She is burning with curiosity concerning the strange country called England, which Kotmasu, willing enough to shine even in the eyes of a married woman, and she my wife, pretends he knows so well.
He is really very funny in his descriptions sometimes. In a sense they are fairly correct; but they are, just like all Japanese pictures, lacking in the most elementary perspective. It is not because his perceptive faculties are lacking, but only that they follow the national groove, the worship of the minute to the exclusion of broader effects.
Mousmé, no doubt with a desire to be in the possession of two opinions, addresses a multitude of questions to him when, as isthe case to-night, he is spending the evening with us.
“What do the women wear? How do they dress? Are theirobisas handsome as mine?” and so on.
Kotmasu endeavors to describe the attire of my fellow-countrymen, blundering magnificently over its hidden intricacies.
“It is dull, very dull indeed,” he explains, with an apologetic glance in my direction, as if fearful that I should seek to upset his statement. “There are no colours worn—at least,” he hastens to add, with another glance over in my direction through the tiny cloud of bluish-grey smoke his absurd tobacco-pipe permits him to eject, “not colours like ours. Not like you are wearing, Mousmé.”
I laugh to myself, partially at the perplexed expression on Mousmé’s face, and partially at the idea of her promenadingin England in all the glory of a canary-colouredobi, plum-coloured gown embroidered in gold thread, and a bifurcated garment of ivory satin.
“The women wear noobis,” continues Kotmasu, complacently.
“Noobis!” ejaculates Mousmé, evidently incredulous.
“No. Sometimes the children do.”
“It is velly stlange,” says Mousmé, “and they not look velly large here. See!” she continues, placing her tiny hands as though to span her waist. “What do they wear then?”
Kotmasu is launched forthwith into a veritable catalogue. The garments comprised in which must be individually explained for Mousmé’s enlightenment. Kotmasu, plunging innocently into the sea of impropriety, at last succeeds in satisfying her curiosity.
As we rise and step out upon the verandahto get a breath of cooler air, she comes close to me, and taking my hand in her pretty I-wish-to-be-protected way, whispers in Japanese, “How strange it will be! Cy-reel, I am a little frightened; I feel like the other night when I was awoke by thenidzoumiscampering across the floor, and squeak, squeaking in the walls.”
Mousmé is like her Western sisters in her fear of mice.
“But I shall be there, Mousmé,” I reply, as she squeezes my hand.
“Yes, Cy-reel;” then with a coquettish smile, which I can see ere we pass out into the gloom of the verandah, “perhaps, perhaps it may be all right.”
It had been raining. Such torrents of rain! Kotmasu had come up to see us through it all. A queer figure in an out-of-date English mackintosh, the rubber as well as the style of which, he had admittedunder pressure of my chaff, had perished, and a wonderful umbrella-like hat of huge diameter.
Down all the mountain-paths, and the steep roads leading into the town, the miniature torrents ran, as if they must sweep away the very foundations of the frail, queer-looking houses.
The harbour was blotted out, the town obscured by the vast grey masses of cloud, which, topping the hills they hid, seemed to fall down their sides into the hollow of the town.
Mousmé and I, till Kotmasu came, had watched the scene from the verandah, waiting for the rifts in the watery veil which, sure to come sooner or later, would give us exquisite peeps of indescribable loveliness.
Now all three of us are standing there in all the silver glory of Japanese moonlight.
Kotmasu even is silent, and makes no further attempt to explain English ways and customs to Mousmé.
The hillside, with its drenched foliage and grassy slopes, is like a sheet of frosted silver. In the foreground lies our garden set thick with Nature’s flashing, gem-like rain-drops. The harbour can be seen again, as usual, an immense black pearl of irregular shape, with here and there a streak of moonlight pencilled on its tranquil surface. The cemeteries and tea-fields stretched below us to the right and left are but darker oxidised silver; the temples and tea-houses but embossed figures.
Down quite below us is the still darker patch of colouring, immense, far-spreading, which marks the town; the lights and the gleam of lanterns look in the damp air like angry eyes seen in tears.
Few sounds reach us, and even the cicala’s chirp is far less noisy than usual.Mousmé still has hold of my hand, and I can see her face glancing upward now and then.
We might have remained there on the verandah with the light of the room behind us streaming out, a warm yellow patch, for another hour or two, so impressive was the view, and the silence which all three of us seemed so reluctant to break. But suddenly we are startled by theBoom! Boom—m—m!of the immense gong belonging to the Shinto monastery far below us down the mountain side. Such a noise!—awe-inspiring, terrific (if there be tone colours, then red, purple and orange), invading every hillside cranny, seeming positively to engulf us in its ever-widening air circles of sound.
“It has spoiled all,” whispers Mousmé, heaving a sigh.
“Yes, little Mousmé. See, it has even frightened the moonbeams.”
A dense cloud drags its edge across the face of the moon, and now all—except the lights of the town and the few twinkling, feeble lamps of the ships out in the harbour, which appear brighter suddenly for lack of their celestial rival—is dark.
Kotmasu knocks the ashes out of his tiny pipe bowl with a sharp, metallic tap upon the bamboo verandah rail, and says:
“There will be another storm soon. I must be going.”
He says good-night somewhat reluctantly after all; and when we have watched him go away down the path, over the edges of which our poor rain-beaten tea-roses are straggling, with his big hat, paper umbrella on which a grinning and intelligent-looking red dragon is fearlessly daubed, and an orange paper lantern with bars and lozenges of vermilion, which the rising wind threatens every moment to overturn or extinguish, we go in.
Oka’s wife is playing hersamisenin the basement, its twanging strains ascending to us through the thin floor. She is singing now in a shrill, squeaky voice, perhaps to amuse Oka, or to lull one of the numerous little Okas to sleep. The song goes on to some accompaniment which is too irregular to be anything save an improvisation, all the time Mousmé is taking a few of the most valuable and elaborate pins out of her hair, preparatory to sleep. My toilet is a simple one compared to that of Mousmé, which indeed is so elaborate that I have frequently caught myself idly wondering why she ever gets up or goes to bed to go through such a process. There are her garments to be carefully stowed away in her little cupboards, curiously contrived behind the panelling. The proper folding of herobiis in itself a matter of some considerable importance, to judge from the serious, rapt expression of her face. Then thereare the wonderful pins with which her pretty head, set so well on her sloping shoulders, is adorned.
There is no light to put out, because I always keep the lamp with its glowworm flame burning throughout the night. It permits, for one thing, Mousmé properly to arrange her head in the little hollow of her camphor-wood pillow; for another, it allows me to watch her fall asleep, and the antics of the moths outside our slate-blue gauze mosquito curtain when I cannot sleep myself.
To-night, however, I am lulled to rest by the sheer monotony of Oka’s wife’s song; and the last thing I remember is the twang, twing, twang of hersamisen, which is quite loud now, I have my ear so close to the floor.
Illustrated chapter headingCHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER TEN
This morning we have had a visit from mother-in-law and the little monkey of an Aki. It appears that Kotmasu has told her—and what is more, has made her at last believe—that we are really going away to England.
Mother-in-law is unlearned except in the housekeeper’s art, and this conveys nothing very definite as regards locality to her mind. England, Europe even, is as indefinite a place as the Shinto heaven. Somewhere out beyond the harbour, which she can see from our verandah, even beyond green-wooded Hoyaki and Cape Nomo, but that is all she knows or can imagine. We are going away, therefore she will not be the further recipient of the“handsome presents” in which her soul delights. I quite comprehend that this is the direction her thoughts will take, and it is really to assure herself that Kotmasu’s statement is absolutely true that she has toiled up the hillside in the hot sun so early in the day.
Why she has brought Aki to the family council I cannot conceive; but Aki has brought a tortoise about the size of a silver dollar, with which he contentedly plays in the sun on the verandah, where I can see his funny little shaven head, with its tufts of black hair, bobbing about, above the edge of the lower half of our sliding-panel window as we talk. No doubt he has brought some fantastically shaped and gorgeously coloured doughtoy out from the folds of his outer garment to keep the tortoise company.
“So you are going away?” says mother-in-law in Japanese, Mousmé’s efforts toteach her even a few words of English having proved quite unavailing.
“Yes,” I reply; “we are going to England soon.”
I somehow feel as though I were committing a robbery; and her next remark serves rather to deepen my disquietude.
“You are going to take my daughter with you, honourable sir?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you would only require her whilst you remained in Nagasaki.”
I have never yet succeeded in making my mother-in-law understand the permanency of my attachment, and I do not hope to accomplish the feat now; but I explain, hinting that there will be “handsome presents” to all the members of her (for me inconveniently large) household when we take our departure.
This, if nothing else, she comprehends; and she offers no further objection to Mousmé’s accompanying me.
In many respects I like this queer little painted doll of a mother-in-law, who has really wonderfully beautiful brown hair, and a childish way and smile, notwithstanding her seven children, and underlying native rapacity on a small and engagingly frank scale. So I suggest that Mousmé and I shall give a farewell entertainment to my Japanese relations, and this idea meets with her most cordial approval.
I smile to myself at having mollified her so easily, and reflect that, as Kotmasu once philosophically remarked, marriage was cheaper after all, and I should have no cash payment to make for permission to take Mousmé with me.
Mother-in-law is quite content now, and as firmly convinced as ever that I am a “velly much rich honourable English sir,” for thus Oka always describes me. She insists upon prostrating herself most outrageously, to the disarrangement of herobi,on the end of which she unfortunately steps when she takes her leave, which she does as soon as she is satisfied that it is really my intention to ask all my relations to a farewellfête.
Mousmé is, I fancy, a little alarmed at the prospect; for as soon as her mother has gone with Aki weeping at her side, and apparently refusing to be comforted by his mother’s more or less specious promises, because of the disappearance of his tortoise, which has doubtless fallen down amongst Oka’s progeny through a crack in the verandah floor, she exclaims in an awe-struck voice:
“Cy-reel, do you know how many there are?”
“No,” I am forced to admit.
“They are as numerous as the bees in the garden.”
“Very well,” I answer resignedly; “we must do our best.”
“They are very strange, some of them, very strange persons indeed,” she continues, with a look of surprise that I am not frightened.
“The more bees, the greater the honey,” I reply, quoting a maxim that may be hers, or her mother’s, or one of national adoption.
Her little face—perhaps she is dreading all the fuss and bother and pain of taking leave of people she may care for—becomes more sober than ever.
“But there is a barber!”
I exhibit no surprise.
She takes my hand to prepare me for the last and greatest shock of all.
“Cy-reel, I am afraid that there may be asampanboy.”
This is coming down in the world with a vengeance. But what are the odds? So I reassure her.
“Mother is sure to let it be known. Perhaps, even, people who are not relationsmay come, people I should not care to know,” resumed Mousmé, drawing herself up, and looking ridiculously funny in her sudden affectation of pride—and after thesampanman, too!
I shall have a queer party, it is certain. Never mind. Only, I must caution Mousmé not to mention her uncle the barber to Lou when we get to England, nor refer even casually to the brother-in-law who earns a living as asampanrower.
During the next few days Mousmé is very busy. She knows, if I do not, what a superior and lavish entertainment will be expected of the “very much rich English sir;” men and women from the town seem to be clicking our wicket gate after them all day long, and walking up the path to the house interminably.
Mousmé has ordered everything which can in any way assist in confirming their belief in my importance and wealth. Thepiéces de résistanceof the feast are different sorts of Huntley and Palmer’s biscuits. I know well how little Aki’s eyes will gleam at the mere sight of the sugared ones.
These biscuits, strange to say, will stamp the entertainment as one of superior character. They are, of course, very dear, and Mousmé knows they will be duly appreciated.
She tells me in an awed voice that her numerous relatives will come early and depart late.
“Will, perhaps, not go until all these wonderful biscuits have disappeared.”
I smilingly pretend to be very terrified.
We have entertained our vast collection of relatives; and possibly more than one stranger unawares.
What a quaint conglomeration they proved! How they all could be relatedstill puzzles me; but related undoubtedly most of them were, from “gilded youths” (some of Mousmé’s numerous cousins-in-law) in their bowler hats and other pseudo-European garments, with the silly faces of idlers, to the much-fearedsampanrower, who proved quite a gentleman in manners.
Mousmé and I received them, and listened to their profuse compliments, whilst I, at least, was inwardly amused at their salutations and kow-towing, performed even by the ladies on all-fours.
Oka and his wife hand round tiny cups of tea, equally minute plates of candied beans, plums in sugar, and cherries in vinegar; and as our guests’ tastes are satisfied, they pass out into the garden, gay with lanterns, and full of music performed by some strollingsamisenplayers whose services I secured.
These really play well. If only they would not sing!
My numerous relatives are in no hurry to go. But at length, quite late, the last family has left us, with their lanterns in their hands and reiterated good wishes and compliments on their lips; and the garden is again silent save for the chirruping cicalas, who, like the poor, are indeed always with us, the splash of the fountains, and the hoarse, sepulchral croak, croak of awakened frogs.
We linger, Mousmé and I, a little while in the garden, which at the end of the month we shall give over into other hands, and then we go in, and Mousmé smokes a little pipe ere retiring to rest. It took me some time to get accustomed to the habit, which seems to afford her such unqualified delight, but now I am resigned. The tobacco is so mild, and the little silver pipe with its thimble-sized bowl looks so toy-like and innocent; and now I find, from the papers and magazines Lou sendsme, that it is becoming quite the fashion for women and girls in England to smoke mild and scented cigarettessub rosa.
Mousmé knocks out the ashes from her pipe on the edge of her little ember bowl, with a metallic pin, pin, pan, and then, taking off her day garment of plum-coloured brocade, slips into a dressing-gown robe of blue linen, with wide sleeves and anobiof powder-blue muslin, which she knots in the inevitable exaggerated butterfly bow round her supple waist.
I shall, after all, be sorry to leave this strange Eastern home of mine, with its queer noises at the dead of night, and its fragrant garden, the sweet perfume from which drifts in and even penetrates through our blue mosquito-curtain of stout gauze, when we leave, as we frequently do, the panels of our outer wall pushed back for air.
Then there is the trouble of packing;the bother of going through all the letters and papers which I at first, when home-sick, commenced to keep because they came from home, and afterwards because I was too indolent to destroy them. All this must be done now, however; must indeed be begun to-morrow. There are Mousmé’s belongings, too, which she is already packing in her mind’s eye in ridiculous little lacquer boxes, which would be battered into matchwood ere they were stowed in the hold.
I lie awake for some time thinking over all this, and watching the big night-moths come in through the open panel of the window, and then flutter round the idol’s head for a moment ere singeing their poor soft wings at the flame of the lamp burning before its placid features. Some of them are so big that they make quite an appreciable noise on the white matting floor when they fall headlong on to it. I fall asleep watching—
“the deadly gyrations of the poor fascinated things, on suicide intent,”
“the deadly gyrations of the poor fascinated things, on suicide intent,”
“the deadly gyrations of the poor fascinated things, on suicide intent,”
“the deadly gyrations of the poor fascinated things, on suicide intent,”
and dream that I am pursued by huge monsters of moths with heads like the awful masks I see every day in the curio shops. And I frighten little Mousmé nearly out of her wits, just as it is getting light, by my frantic attempts to escape from my dream-bred horrors, and the environment of the mosquito-curtain.
When I am fully awake we sit bolt upright on our mattress bed, and laugh just like children; I because Mousmé, with face screwed up in half-laughter, half-tears, looks so comical with her eyes blinking at the light; and she because it is such a relief for her to find that “Cy-reel is not gone mad after all.”
Mousmé and I spent the first part of the day shopping, buying Japanese curios and native silks and embroideries for those at home, a very expensive cabinet with wholenests of tiny drawers for Lou—frankly, to propitiate her—and European articles when and where we could get them for the “handsome presents” of which my mother-in-law and Mousmé’s numerous brothers and sisters are so fond.
Mousmé’s dress is an ideal one for such an amusement as shopping. It is simply astounding how much she can stow away mysteriously in the many pockets of her wide sleeves alone.
Down at Ako San’s, the jeweller, near the quay, whose shop is a generaldépôtfor things European, she packs away, I can scarce conceive where, half the numerous little purchases we make. I take the rest; and then loaded, both of us, arms, pockets and all, we slowly climb the hill to our home, which is already partially dismantled in view of our departure.
It has that terrible, painful vacancy of a house half-deserted. It seems no longerto belong to us, as though the ghosts of possible future tenants already possessed it. Poor tiny house, which will probably know Mousmé’s laugh no more!
Whilst Mousmé is wrapping up our presents in soft, silky textured rice-paper ready for their recipients, I get together some of my things.
Alas! when I come to sort my clothing, I am made painfully aware that when I land in England I shall be shabby and out-of-date.
There is a whole pile of European clothing on the floor near my writing-table, the sunlight cruelly exposing all its shabbinesses; but little of it will be of use. I shall give some of the best of the garments remaining when I have selected mine, to Mousmé’s two elder brothers. They will be delighted even if the things don’t fit. They possess minds happily unvexed by such momentous questions as “bagging atthe knees” and “a bad fit about the back and shoulders.” Happy Japanese mashers!
At last I have persuaded Mousmé that her toy trunks and lacquer boxes are no use for travelling to England. She has never had anything else, and can scarcely understand why they will not do.
I have bought her, through the kind agency of Kotmasu (who is up with us nearly all day long, now that we are going to leave so soon), a big trunk—a veritable Saratoga, I fondly believe—which had belonged to a deceased lady missionary. Into this trunk, with infinite care, Mousmé is placing all her little belongings, packed for double security in the lacquer boxes, with storks, frogs and fishes decorating them, which I had condemned.
Really, Mousmé has quite a respectable amount of luggage.
This will be something in her favour atany rate in sister Lou’s eyes. What a gorgeous little fairy she will look in all her fantastic finery!
A possible new owner of the house has been here this morning; and although he was terribly polite and ridiculous in his lengthy-phrased humility and repeated prostrations, he did not succeed in dispelling the impression all possible new owners seem to create, namely, that the old owner is an intruder whose presence is only by sufferance, though his lease may not have actually expired. This attitude of this one—the man about to take possession—is a bit of human nature; the same, I found, in Japan as elsewhere.
We finish our packing at sunset.
Nothing now remains visible in our bare-stripped home except the things we retain for our use, which will be packed in confusion at the moment of departure.
We fully intended to go down to thegreat tea-house to-night for the last time; but although we both say we are too tired, we are in truth both aware that we have no heart for mixing with the merry throng, or for watching thegeishasdancing. So we go to rest.
“Our last night here,” as Mousmé says, with a little choked sob. Everything is now described as “last.”
It is terribly melancholy.
In the morning we go round the garden, and Mousmé gathers a posy of the choicest flowers, pink-cupped lotus, gardenias and roses; she buries her face in it to hide the tears I know are falling in salt dew upon the fragrant blossoms. Then we feed the gold-fish, and watch them poke their red-gold heads just above the surface, making rippling circles which widen and rock the lily-leaves and lotus blossoms. And whilst we are doing all this in the sunlit garden of our late home, we can hear Oka’s deep, gruffvoice giving directions to the men who, with dilapidatedrikishasnow turned into hand-trucks, are loading up our luggage to take it down to the quay and on board the steamer.
“That is the last,” we hear Oka say in gruff tones; “mind that the honourable English sir’s effects are not damaged.”
“Yes, that is the last,” says one of the porters.
“This is the last,” says Mousmé, opening her hand over the gold-fish pond.
We go up the path to the house in silence; look sorrowfully into each of the bare, empty rooms; take leave of Oka, and Oka’s wife, who is in tears; press a shining newyeninto each of the innumerable children’s hands, even into that of the brown baby in Oka’s wife’s arms, whose tiny fist is not large enough to hold the shining silver, in which it sees only a new plaything; and then walk away out of thegarden of sweet flowers to follow our porters with the luggage.
Next morning we are to sail soon after sunrise, and we get up to see the last of Nagasaki and our home, now a mere matchbox-looking villa (when seen from the deck of our steamer down here in the harbour) perched high up on the hillside, in company with scores of other similar abodes.
As we drift out from our moorings in mid-harbour, we catch sight of it for the last time, and Mousmé through her tears kisses her fingers to it.
We wave our hands and handkerchiefs to those on shore, to Kotmasu, a tiny figure on the quay, and to the men who have congregated in theirsampans, like a flock of water-fowl, to see the greatjokisenoff.
Then we pass through the narrow neck of the harbour, with the towering green slopes of the hills seeming almost about tofall on top of us, past Hoyaki, out into the ocean beyond.
Mousmé, who stands by my side all the time, her hand clutching my arm, gives a shuddering little sob.
Who can blame her?
With every throb of the engines, every heave of the huge vessel to the ocean swell, we are carried farther and farther into the—for her—unknown.
And it is only the unknown which is terrible.