Page 1 (1/2)
Part I
Chapter 1
WATER LAPPING SALT AT his cheek roused hi its way into the hollow of sand where his face rested It spurred him: with an effort he pushed to hands and knees and then up, to stagger indecorously along the shore and fall again at the foot of several gnarled old pines clinging to the edge of the beach
His ue swollen His hands were clotted with sand The wind bit sharply through the sodden wool of his coat, stained black ater, and he was barefoot Slowly, he unfastened the remnants of a leather harness froood steel, still bright, but heavily waterlogged; he let it fall to the sand The sword-belt he kept The blade when he dreas bright Damascus steel, the hilt wrapped in black ray-skin, the collar the golden head of a dragon He stared down at it, without recognition
He rested it across his knees and leaned back against the tree, half-drifting The empty ocean stood before hirey; dark clouds receded into the east He ed onto the sand new-born He felt as eth, of history, of name
Thirst at last drove him onwards, when little else would have served to rouse hiave onto a road, well-ns of heavy use, recent tracks and disturbed dust He walked slowly and mechanically until he found a narrow strea towards the sea, and he stopped and cupped water into his one
He held hi frorass, though the ground was still cold There was a smell in the air of pine-needles, and the strea with the more distant sound of the ocean, the scent of salt on the wind He felt inwardly the sense of soht on his back But his trerass of the riverbank where he had knelt to drink and fell again into a heavy torpor; his head ached dully
The sun climbed, warmed his coat Travelers went past on the nearby road He was distantly aware of the jingle of harness and slap of walking feet, the occasional creak of cart wheels, but none of them stopped to bother him or even halted by the strea off-key, loudly and cheerfully, not in any tongue he knew At last a larger co of an old-fashioned sedan-chair Soe of an older woh London streets, but even as it ca stopped abruptly; a voice spoke from the chair: a clear tenor with the directness of authority Prudence would have driven hith In a moment, someone caue i down over him, but not so low that the face came clear
The servant paused, and then withdrew quickly to hisvoice There was another pause, and then the ue, one which he could not put a na and falling speech, musical "I will not evade the will of Heaven Tell me"
"He is Dutch," the servant answered in that sae, reluctance clear in every word
He ht have raised his head to speak--he was not Dutch, and knew that, if very little else; but he was cold, and his lio on--"
"Enough," the tenor voice said, quiet but final
He heard orders given in the unfae while darkness stole over his vision; there were hands on hiround and slung into a sheet or a net for carrying; he could not even open his eyes to see The co steadily back and forth as they went on, he felt al with the water Themore
"William Laurence," he said, and ith his own naled dreaht of despair, a sinking ship It faded as he struggled up to sit He had been lying on a thin pad laid upon a floor of woven straw , in a room like none he had ever seen before: one solid wooden wall, the rest of translucent white paper set in fran of doors or s He had been bathed and dressed in a robe of light cotton; his own clothes were gone, and his sword He missed the latter more
He felt adrift, robbed of place and tiht have been a solitary hut or a rooht be set upon a ht have slept an hour, a day, a week A shadow abruptly loomed on the other side of the wall furthest fro a track to furnish Laurence a gli half-open, indistinguishable from his own, save for a hich looked out on a sli rowth, perhaps sixteen, ca and folded himself into the low-roofed chamber while Laurence stared at hi face with a sharp chin, clean-shaven and softened with the last remnants of puppy-fat; his dark hair was drawn back into a tail, and he wore an intricately arranged set of robes, creases as sharp as knife-edges
He sat down on his heels and conteh to be aiue-carrier After a nized the voice--the youth who had wished him left by the road
"I have not the least notion what you are saying," Laurence said, his voice sounding hoarse in his own ears He cleared his throat: even that lish? Or French? Where a repeated the last over in the other language which the men had spoken on the road
"You are in Chikuzen Province," the young asaki, as you must well know"
There was a sharp bitterness to his voice, but Laurence seized on the one faasaki?" he said, half in relief, but the ratification faded: he was no less bewildered to know hiht have been
The young e, and he wore a sword; an equerry of souess--esture motioned him off the mat
Laurence shifted himself onto the floor, with so was too low to have permitted him to stand unless he had hunched over like a toad, and he ached in every part Two servants ca man’s call; they tidied the ar in their layers He felt a clu, thrust one way and then another as he put his liht hient broth, with an array of startling pickles It was by no means the breakfast he would have chosen, his stomach unsettled, but they had no sooner put it before hier beca devoured nearly half the -sticks, which he had picked up and used without thinking of it
He forced hio on more slowly than he wished, still queasy and conscious of being under observation, the younghim coldly and steadily the whole of his meal "Thank you," Laurence said at last, when he had finished, and the dishes were silently and deftly reive your master lad of an opportunity to repay it"
The youth only coether "This way," he said shortly Laurence supposed he could have not looked anything but a vagabond, when they had found him
The corridors of the house were not so stooped as the chambers Laurence followed hi-desk of so smoothly with brush and ink His forehead and pate were clean-shaven, with a queue of his back hair clubbed tight and bound down doubled, over the bare skin; his garh of the sa man bowed to hiesturing towards him
"Junichiro tellsaside his brush He looked across the desk at Laurence, wearing an expression of for man--Junichiro?--had aimed at him
"Sir," Laurence said, "I lish froe and polished bronze mirror The face which looked back at hiard fro; a thin white scar running down his cheek, long-healed, which he did not reed years since he had seen himself last
"Perhaps you would be so kind as to explain to me the circumstances of your arrival in this part of the country," the ed to say, reeling, "I am Captain William Laurence, of His Majesty’s Ship Reliant, of the Royal Navy And I have not the least notion how I have come to be here, except if my ship has suffered some accident, which God forbid"
Laurence did not much knohat else he said afterwards He supposed they saw his confusion and distress, for the questions stopped, and a servant was called to bring in a tray: a flask and save it to hilad for the intensity: strong as brandy though light on the tongue His cup was refilled proh to be a single s But he put it down afterwards "I beg your pardon," he said, feeling acutely that he had lost control of himself, and all the more aard in the face of their carefully polite failure to notice it "I beg your pardon," he said, ly "Sir, to answer your question, I cannot tell you how I came to be here: I must have been swept overboard, is the only possible answer As for purpose, I have none; I have neither business nor friends in this part of the world"