ng in
the distance the sweetest of music. And the whirr of the
cicalas--which, in Japan, is one of the continuous noises of life, and
which in a few days we shall no longer even be aware of, so completely
is it the background and foundation of all the other terrestrial
sounds--was sonorous, incessant, softly monotonous, just like the
cascade of a crystal waterfall.

III.

The next day the rain came down in torrents, a regular downpour,
merciless and unceasing, blinding and drenching everything,--a thick
rain so dense that it was impossible to see through it from one end of
the vessel to the other. It seemed as though the clouds of the whole
world had amassed themselves in Nagasaki bay, and had chosen this
great green funnel to stream down to their hearts' content. And it
rained, it rained, it became almost as dark as night, so thickly did
the rain fall. Through a veil of crumbled water, we still perceived
the base of the mountains, but the summits were lost to sight among
the great somber masses weighing down upon us. Above us shreds of
clouds, seemingly torn from the dark vault, draggled across the trees,
like vast gray rags,--continually melting away in water, torrents of
water. There was wind too, and it howled through the ravines with a
deep-sounding tone. The whole surface of the bay, bespattered by the
rain, flogged by the gusts of wind that blew from all quarters,
splashed, moaned and seethed in violent agitation.

What wretched weather for a first landing, and how was I to find a
wife through such a deluge, in an unknown country!

* * * * *

No matter! I dressed myself and said to Yves, who smiled at my
obstinate determination in spite of unfavorable circumstances:

"Hail me a 'sampan,' brother, please."

Yves then, by a motion of his arm through the wind and rain, summoned
a kind of little white wooden sarcophagus which was skipping near us
on the waves, sculled by a couple of yellow boys stark naked in the
rain. The craft approached us, I jumped into it, then through a little
trap-door shaped like a rat-trap that one of the scullers throws open
for me, I slipped in and stretched myself at full length on a mat in
what is called the "cabin" of a sampan.

There was just room enough for my body to lie in this floating coffin,
which is moreover scrupulously clean, white with the whiteness of new
deal boards. I was well sheltered from the rain, that fell pattering
on