thrilled by the thought of their unusual
situation; and perhaps the soldier gave utterance to the sentiment of
both when he sang, "in Chinese singing" (so that we see he had already
profited by his lessons), these two appropriate verses:

"We do not know where we are to sleep to-night,
In a thousand miles of desert where we can see no human smoke."

In a little temple, hard by the sea-shore, they lay down to repose;
sleep overtook them as they lay; and when they awoke, "the east was
already white" for their last morning in Japan. They seized a
fisherman's boat and rowed out--Perry lying far to sea because of the
two tides. Their very manner of boarding was significant of
determination; for they had no sooner caught hold upon the ship than
they kicked away their boat to make return impossible. And now you would
have thought that all was over. But the Commodore was already in treaty
with the Shogun's Government; it was one of the stipulations that no
Japanese was to be aided in escaping from Japan; and Yoshida and his
followers were handed over as prisoners to the authorities at Simoda.
That night he who had been to explore the secrets of the barbarian,
slept, if he might sleep at all, in a cell too short for lying down at
full length, and too low for standing upright. There are some
disappointments too great for commentary.

Sakuma, implicated by his handwriting, was sent into his own province in
confinement, from which he was soon released. Yoshida and the soldier
suffered a long and miserable period of captivity, and the latter,
indeed, died, while yet in prison, of a skin disease. But such a spirit
as that of Yoshida-Torajiro is not easily made or kept a captive; and
that which cannot be broken by misfortune you shall seek in vain to
confine in a bastille. He was indefatigably active, writing reports to
Government and treatises for dissemination. These latter were
contraband; and yet he found no difficulty in their distribution, for he
always had the jailer on his side. It was in vain that they kept
changing him from one prison to another; Government by that plan only
hastened the spread of new ideas; for Yoshida had only to arrive to make
a convert. Thus, though he himself was laid by the heels, he confirmed
and extended his party in the State.

At last, after many lesser transferences, he was given over from the
prisons of the Shogun to those of his own superior, the Daimio of
Choshu. I conceive it possible