network.

"He will succeed," he said to Davidov. "He will succeed. I almost
hoped he would not, he is so indifferent--I might almost say so
hostile--to my own scientific adventures. But when he is in this mood,
when those cold eyes brim with laughter and ordinary humanity, I am
nothing better than his slave."

Rezanov, in reply to an entreaty from Father Uria to tell them more of
his mission and of the strange picture-book country they had never
hoped to hear of at first hand, assumed a tone of great frankness and
intimacy. "We were, with astounding cleverness, treated from the first
like an audience in a new theatre. After we had solemnly been towed by
a string of boats to anchor, under the Papen mountains, all Nagasaki
appeared to turn out, men, women and children. Thousands of little
boats, decorated with flags by day and colored lanterns by night, and
filled with people in gala attire, swarmed about us, gazed at us
through telescopes, were so thick on the bay one could have traversed
it on foot. The imperial sailors were distinguished by their uniforms
of a large blue and white check, suggesting the pinafores of a
brobdingnagian baby. The barges of the imperial princes were covered
with blue and white awnings and towed to the sound of kettledrums and
the loud measured cries of the boatmen. At night the thousands of
illuminated lanterns, of every color and shade, the waving of fans, the
incessant chattering, and the more harmonious noise that rose
unceasingly above, made up a scene as brilliant as it was juvenile and
absurd. In the daytime it was more interesting, with the background of
hills cultivated to their crests in the form of terraces, varied with
rice fields, hamlets, groves, and paper villas encircled with little
gardens as glowing and various of color as the night lanterns. When,
at last, I was graciously permitted to have a residence on a point of
land called Megasaki, I was conveyed thither in the pleasure barge of
the Prince of Fisi. There was place for sixty oarsmen, but as one of
the few tokens of respect, I was enabled to record for the comfort of
the mighty sovereign whose representative I was, the barge was towed by
a long line of boats, decorated with flags, the voices of the rowers
rising and falling in measured cadence as they announced to all Japan
the honor about to be conferred upon her. I sat on a chair of state in
the central compartment of the barge, and quite alone; my suite