Tokyo Bay Page 30

  ‘Sentaro, I saw our ships!’ he called softly, dropping to his knees by the hearth and gathering together fresh firewood to relight the fire. ‘The clouds rolled back and I could see for about a hundred miles.. But I believe that there are samurai already up there on the peak

  Disturbed suddenly by the quietness in the hut, Eden broke off and peered into the gloom. The vegetable-oil lamp was flickering in its jar by the hearth, but no response at all came from the shadows beyond it. Rising to his feet in alarm, Eden seized the lamp and raised it above his head. Its light illuminated all four corners of the dusty shelter, and Eden saw then that the quilts with which Sentaro had covered himself had been abruptly discarded in an untidy heap beside one wall. Eden’s belongings lay untouched on the hearth where he had left them, but the castaway, his waterproof waist-pouch and his climbing staff were gone.

  36

  THE COVERING OF crisp snow crunched beneath his sandalled feet as if it were powdered glass when Eden scrambled, bent double, into the mouth of a drift-filled lava gully forty feet above the pilgrim hut. Clutching his climbing stave he ducked down behind a cluster of bare rocks that jutted up through the snow like the serrated humps of a black dragon. His broad hat was pulled down over his eyes, and he was carrying his sword in the gun-belt outside the padded kimono so that it would come quickly to hand in an emergency.

  He had selected the cluster of rocks just above the snow line as the closest vantage point to the hut from which he would be able to see down the mountain in all directions. The rocks themselves protected a bulging knoll of basalt and, when he had settled himself, he craned his neck to survey each of the downward slopes in turn, hoping to catch sight of Sentaro’s slight figure. But nowhere on the wastes of dark shale could he detect any sign of human movement. He also searched east and west along the face of the volcano, yet still saw nothing. Baffled, he scrutinized all the same downward slopes again, using his miniature binoculars, but without any success.

  The light was fading fast and the snow in the gully earned whiter in contrast to the sinister sable wastes all around. With the sun sinking rapidly into the clouded horizon below; more stars were beginning to glimmer overhead and, with feelings of desperation mounting inside him, Eden turned to look up over his shoulder. As he did so an indistinct flicker of movement on the snowy cliff two or three hundred feet above him caught his eye. At first he thought a small wounded animal was scuttling up the snow- filled lava gully, but when he turned to focus his gaze more intently, he realized he was looking at the hunched figure of a man scrambling clumsily upward on all fours.

  For a second or two Eden stared in disbelief despite the fading light he could see that the climber was wearing a cone-shaped hat of straw and a long white gown. Lifting his binoculars to his eyes, he trained them carefully on the heights and drew in his breath sharply as the identity of the tiny figure was confirmed beyond any shadow of doubt. In almost the same instant another flurry of movement drew his attention, and he raised the binoculars quickly to scan the snow-capped summit. This time he saw a long line of agile figures descending rapidly from Fuji’s jagged crater. Moving purposefully in single file, about fifteen men were heading down a snow-filled ravine towards the scrambling figure, who remained unaware of their approach. Three or four of them were unarmed but Eden could see that all the others were helmeted samurai who wore swords and carried bows and quivers slung about their shoulders.

  As he watched the armed men, the rational part of Eden’s mind told him that now was the perfect moment to slip away down the black shale of the western slope, at a fast run. In the gathering gloom he could reasonably hope to reach the foot of the mountain unseen and begin his journey back to the Susquehanna under the cover of darkness; any other course of action seemed certain to end in disaster. Glancing westward along the mountainside, he wondered if he was right to suspect that other warriors might appear from below at any moment. There was no sign yet of other climbers but the suspicion strengthened his urge to plunge back down the mountain, and with his eye he picked out a likely path that led away through the rocks beneath his vantage point.

  On raising his gaze again, however, he saw that the small, lone figure was now sinking repeatedly into the snow, and was having to stop frequently to rest. The armed samurai were taking advantage of every contour to remain hidden from view, but they were clearly moving to cut him off, and Eden watched for only a moment longer before rising abruptly from his hiding place and lunging out into the gully, in full view

  ‘Sentaro!’ he yelled in Japanese, waving both arms wildly above his head. ‘Turn round! Turn around and come down - fast!’

  Eden’s shouts echoed resoundingly across the snow-covered faces of the mountain, but Sentaro did not look back. He seemed to stumble, and stopped for a moment, clinging to a rock: as though on the verge of exhaustion; but then he pushed on again, moving - it seemed to Eden - with the strength that comes only from desperation.

  High above the castaway, the line of samurai halted for a few seconds and stared down at Eden; then a flurry of shouted commands and responses rang back and forth between them before they resumed their descent, clambering down more rapidly than before. Seeing that his warning had been ignored, Eden shouted the same words again and threw himself forward, jabbing his stave fiercely into the snowdrifts to help lever himself between the jutting blocks of lava.

  But still Sentaro did not stop or turn to look back, and Eden fell silent, concentrating all his energy instead on moving as fast as possible up the steep- sided gully. With the disappearance of the sun, the air had become icy cold, and although the wind had quietened, it was still blowing strongly enough to whip flurries of crystalline snow from the rocks into Eden’s face. Through these flurries Sentaro remained intermittently visible, appearing and disappearing by turns as he zigzagged awkwardly amongst swirls of snow-dusted lava which Eden could see had long ago burst out from a narrow, lateral side crater less than a thousand feet below the summit. The castaway had to turn eastward briefly to skirt this gaping oval crater before stumbling on above it and, watching him, Eden noticed that his movements were becoming more sluggish and erratic the higher he climbed. Never raising his head, he appeared to be oblivious to everything that was happening around him, and Eden wondered if the concussion he had suffered had disordered his senses.

  When they saw that the castaway had changed direction slightly, the samurai, who were lowering themselves swiftly between similar knolls of lava, paused briefly for discussion. As soon as they began moving again, Eden saw that they had split into two groups. Half a dozen of the faster warriors, led by two guides, were striking daringly across the snow- covered rock face in a diagonal line, heading directly towards Sentaro and the side crater. The rest were proceeding more slowly, moving along a well- defined ravine that would bring them downward in a wider sweep to cut off his retreat to the side and the rear. Sentaro’s own pace slowed to a crawl as he entered another gully and, on seeing this, Eden began to climb faster, straining every muscle in an effort to get to the castaway before the descending samurai.

  Within three minutes Eden had reached the side crater and, after racing around its scorched rim, he caught sight of Sentaro again no more than a hundred feet above him. The castaway had stopped halfway up a funnelled gradient of deep snow, and fallen to his knees beside a ridge of black rock, his head bowed to the ground as though in silent prayer. Some two hundred feet higher up that same snow-covered ridge, Eden suddenly saw the smaller group of samurai come into view. Swinging hand over hand on braided cotton ropes, they were making rapid progress down one of the volcano’s steepest cliffs. They caught sight of Sentaro and Eden at the same moment that he saw them, and excited shouts immediately erupted from their throats.

  ‘Kill the traitor!’ yelled one warrior.

  ‘Capture the barbarian bandit!’ screamed another.

  ‘Take them both now - alive or dead!’ roared a third.

  The samurai continued to give vent to their battle
cries as they came nearer, but the castaway still did not move and Eden broke into a run up the snowy slope.

  ‘Sentaro, get up!’ he cried desperately in Japanese. ‘There are warriors above you! Come back this way.’

  If the castaway heard he paid no heed, and he neither raised his head nor moved in any other way. The shouts of the samurai were growing louder but a longer, more despairing cry rang out suddenly above the din. Looking up, Eden saw that one of the warriors had lost his footing and was tumbling headlong down the mountainside. The flailing body spun and twisted as it fell, and the warrior’s dying screams rang eerily through the dusk as he bounced and rebounded sickeningly off the jagged rock face before plummeting down into the black abyss of the side crater.

  The remaining samurai and the two guides halted in their tracks, clinging to precarious handholds, and watched in horror as a rush of ice and rock followed the body down the precipice. A moment later a louder noise filled the air as a vast slab of snow, set in motion by the falling body of the samurai, started to shift and detach itself from part of the mountain below them. Breaking rapidly into many smaller waves, it cascaded downward within seconds, rumbling and roaring like an ocean storm.

  On hearing the awesome sound of the approaching avalanche, Sentaro stirred himself at last and staggered to his feet. Realizing that part of the moving snow-wall was hurtling directly towards him, he turned and started to run frantically back towards Eden; but before he had taken many paces it broke over the last ridge of black rock and crashed on down the slope at his heels.

  ‘This way!’ yelled Eden above the tumult and dashed forward, waving his arms to attract the dazed castaway’s attention.

  Because he was looking round fearfully over his shoulder, the Japanese stumbled and almost fell. By now the churning bow-wave of the avalanche was no more than fifty yards away, and when Eden reached his side Sentaro was glassy-eyed with fear and exhaustion.

  ‘Hold onto me!’ shouted Eden close to his ear, and swung the slight body of the Japanese up onto his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. ‘Just hold on!’

  Flinging himself sideways out of the path of the rumbling snow slip, Eden plunged in amongst rocks flanking the gradient, and lowered Sentaro to the ground. Crouching protectively over him, he covered his own head with his arms, and a moment later the white tidal wave roared past this natural barrier, shaking the ground and filling the air above their heads with a fine mist of whirling snow and grit. For several seconds the mountainside around them seemed to boil with the frothing white turbulence but, as suddenly as the snow slip began, it ceased and a strange, silent stillness immediately closed in all around them again.

  ‘Master, thank you,’ croaked Sentaro in a stricken whisper, staring at Eden with feverish eyes.

  ‘Don’t talk,’ warned Eden. ‘Just try to get your breath so we can start down the mountain as soon as possible

  Pushing his straw hat back onto his shoulders, Eden cocked his head to one side, listening for sounds of movement on the rock face overhead. When he heard nothing, he quietly unscrewed the stopper from the neck of his water bottle. Cradling the castaway’s head with one arm, he put the bottle to his lips.

  ‘I don’t understand why you decided to climb up here,’ he breathed as he watched the castaway drink. ‘I came back to warn you I’d seen warriors on the summit - but the hut was already empty’

  ‘I did it for you, master gasped Sentaro, after drinking deeply. ‘You wanted to climb right to the peak - but you gave up because of me. . . I knew if I went on, you’d follow’

  ‘You shouldn’t have taken such a risk. . .‘ began Eden in a severe tone, then broke off, motioning the castaway to silence.

  From the rocks overhead the crunch of stealthy footsteps on snow had become faintly audible in the gathering dusk. Easing the hilt of his cutlass higher in his belt, Eden rose in a watchful half-crouch and edged away from the rock wall, peering upward. Narrowing his eyes as he listened, he tried to separate the different footfalls, and hazarded a guess that perhaps four or five warriors were moving cautiously towards the lip of the rocks a few feet above them.

  Within moments this suspicion was confirmed, and he found himself staring up at a row of fearsome samurai war helmets. Outlined starkly against the brightening stars, the helmets were fitted with grotesque fighting masks of painted leather, which concealed the features of half a dozen of Lord Daizo’s cavalry samurai. Only the narrow eyes of the warriors glittered behind the masks, as they stared down at Eden and Sentaro, but a sudden muttered order and an ominous flurry of metallic noise indicated that six long killing swords had been withdrawn simultaneously from their scabbards.

  ‘Surround and disarm the barbarian spy! But leave the traitor alone. I will kill him myself’

  The voice of Daizo Yakamochi rapped out the fierce commands a moment before he and the five other samurai hurled themselves down from the rocks. Their cloaks spread out darkly around them like wings as they plunged onto the snow, but in an instant they were standing upright and forming a threatening semicircle around Eden. With their long swords extended in front of them, they began to move watchfully towards him.

  ‘Come here, Sentaro,’ yelled Eden in Japanese, drawing his own sword and retreating towards the rock. ‘Get behind me!’

  Taken aback at hearing their own language spoken by a foreign barbarian, all the samurai hesitated, and the castaway, who had been crouching on the snowy ground, struggled upright. Rushing to Eden’s side, he shrank against the rock, his face taut with fear.

  ‘Sentaro is not a traitor to his country!’ Eden spoke quickly in Japanese, as he watched the warriors edging closer around him. ‘He’s just a shipwrecked fisherman who was saved by an American ship. Now he’s come home to the country he loves...’

  Yakamochi, who had been staring at Eden, suddenly moved a pace forward, in front of the other samurai. Tugging off his helmet and mask, he studied the American officer intently.

  ‘You are the barbarian who robbed me of my sword on the black ship!’ he exclaimed in a surprised tone. ‘And now you have become a spy!’

  Eden looked back at the samurai nobleman in astonishment as recognition dawned. The man’s face was dark, his eyes narrow and deep-set, his lips harshly thin; the front of his head was shaven in the traditional style, and a long pigtail was tied up in the usual topknot across the crown. His expression was glowering and hostile and in the twilight Eden was reminded suddenly of the anonymously cruel Japanese face which had appeared so dramatically before him in his shipboard dream of Mount Fuji. With night gathering swiftly about the mountain and pinpoint stars beginning to glimmer more brightly all around them, the most disturbing image of his dream seemed to have re-created itself in reality with an eerie exactitude. After recovering from his surprise, Yakamochi took half a pace forward, and it was plain to Eden that his fiercest desire was to avenge the intense humiliation he had suffered on board the Susquehanna.

  ‘I remember you also: said Eden, standing his ground and watching Yakamochi’s sword tip align itself with his chest. ‘But you’re wrong to think I came ashore to spy on you . .

  ‘What other reasons could a barbarian who speaks our language have for landing secretly among us?’ rasped another contemptuous voice from the rocks above them. ‘I am Motohiro, guard captain to Daizo Yakamochi, the young lord of Haifu! You are now a prisoner of the noble Makabe clan. Surrender your sword and don’t insult us with your lies!’

  Eden looked up to see a tall, topknotted figure standing with feet apart on the edge of the rocks. Flanked by three or four other samurai and the mountain monks who had led them down from the summit, Motohiro was still breathing fast from his exertions but his face was alight with the triumph of their capture.

  ‘I’m not lying to his lordship,’ said Eden quietly, looking first at Motohiro then at Yakamochi. ‘I came in peace to seek understanding. That’s why I’ve travelled as far as Fuji-san.’

  ‘You are lying. You are both spies!’ exclaimed Yaka
mochi, his eyes ablaze. ‘You were disturbed in your foul work at the Uraga fort!’

  Eden shook his head and spoke again with an added urgency. ‘Fate forced Sentaro to spend four years in my country He learned many new things there - that’s why he wished to help me grow in understanding here in Nippon. He has taught me something of your language - and he knows men of different races can be brothers. He could help the people of Nippon to understand that.’

  ‘What the barbarian says is true, my lord!’ Summoning his courage, Sentaro shifted uneasily to a position where he could look directly up at Yakamochi. ‘I revere His Imperial Majesty- the Emperor and I love the sacred land of the gods where I was born. In all truth I am not a spy-’

  ‘You are at least a common traitor who has betrayed Nippon by consorting with foreign barbarians: bellowed Motohiro, glaring at the castaway and lifting his sword .above his head. ‘The orders of my lord are that you shall die by this blade!’

  The ring of samurai moved threateningly closer behind Motohiro and Yakamochi, but Eden did not retreat: instead he thrust the point of his own sword towards Yakamochi. ‘If you want to kill Sentaro, you will have to kill me first!’

  ‘Die - if you wish to die,’ hissed Yakamochi, taking another step forward. ‘And. your corpse will be displayed at Uraga in chains. That will be enough to expose the treachery of the black ships. Every doubting clan throughout Nippon will then join an all-out war to drive off the foreign barbarians!’