"

"I have seen him doing that later, where the lanterns shine in Geisha
street, and the little girl was not Yone."

They all laughed. This was not seriously against him.

"Having settled it that he practises the art of music, I will surprise
you with the information that he also pretends to the sister art of
poesy," laughed Asami. "He is the author of 'The Great Death'!"

"What!"

From half a dozen of them.

And they broke into the song: hoarse, iron, clanging, mongolian! Within
the six notes of the old Japanese scale!

(Do not be surprised at this. The Japanese army is full of poets.
Indeed, the Japanese land is full of them. They will spin you a complete
comedy or tragedy between seventeen or thirty-seven syllables. And, to
practise poetry is not there as here, heinous to one's friends. I know
of a gunner who sat cross-legged under his gun behind Poutuloff and
wrote a poem concerning The-Moon-in-a-Moat. It was finished as the
Russians got his range and dropped a covey of shrapnel upon him. After
the smoke cleared they found him dead. And he is forgotten. But his poem
was also found and lived on.)

This was "The Great Death" of Shijiro Arisuga.

"Yell of metal,
Strake of flame!
Death-wound spurting
In my face!
Hail Red Death!"

"Banzai!" cried Jokichi.

"Teikoku Banzai!" yelled Asami.

And, after the tumult, Yasuki, the reserved, himself said:--

"By Shaka, it is the very Yamato Damashii itself! The spirit of young
Japan."

"Nippon Denji!" laughed jolly Kitsushima.

"Yes! The Boys in Blue--as they called them in America in 1864."

Matsumoto had been to Princeton. But the thought of war--giving his soul
for his emperor--made him as mad as they who had never left their native
soil.

"I take all back," cried Nijin, into the tumult.

"And I," yelled Yasuki, who had agreed with him.

"Let him in!" shrilled Matsumoto and Jokichi together. "If he can write
songs--"

"And let him sing! Let him sing war-songs!" adjured Kitsushima!

Still, the happy Nijin, out of propriety of his office, as
recruiting-major, pretended to wish to stem the current started by the
song.

"One moment!" he cried.

But they laughed him down and again started the war-song.

"I _will_ have a moment!"

"Take two!" shouted Jokichi.

"Singing and fighting are two very different occupations."

"No, they are precisely the same," laughed Kitsushima.

"I deny it!"

It was a fierce yell from