the still water at their feet, reflecting
therein their sharply reversed outlines, and presenting the mirage of
fearful precipices, over which we seemed to hang. The stars also were
reversed in their order, making, in the depths of the imaginary abyss, a
sprinkling of tiny phosphorescent lights.

Then all Nagasaki became profusely illuminated, sparkling with
multitudes of lanterns: the smallest suburb, the smallest village was
lighted up; the tiniest but perched up among the trees, which in the
daytime was invisible, threw out its little glowworm glimmer. Soon there
were innumerable lights all over the country on all the shores of the
bay, from top to bottom of the mountains; myriads of glowing fires shone
out in the darkness, conveying the impression of a vast capital rising
around us in one bewildering amphitheatre. Beneath, in the silent
waters, another town, also illuminated, seemed to descend into
the depths of the abyss. The night was balmy, pure, delicious; the
atmosphere laden with the perfume of flowers came wafted to us from the
mountains. From the tea-houses and other nocturnal resorts, the sound of
guitars reached our ears, seeming 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 other
terrestrial sounds--was sonorous, incessant, softly monotonous, like the
murmur of a waterfall.

CHAPTER III. THE GARDEN OF FLOWERS

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