out of the ten thousand. The warriors in their iron armor sank dead
in the boiling waves, or were cast along the shore like logs. The
Japanese army landed safely, and easily conquered the country. The king
of Corea surrendered and gave his bales of silk, jewels, mirrors, books,
pictures, robes, tiger skins, and treasures of gold and silver to the
empress. The booty was loaded on eighty ships, and the Japanese army
returned in triumph to their native country.

KAI RIU O, THE DRAGON KING OF THE WORLD UNDER THE SEA.

Soon after her arrival at home, the empress Jingu gave birth to a son,
whom she named Ojin. He was one of the fairest children ever born of an
imperial mother, and was very wise and wonderful even when an infant. He
was a great favorite of Takenouchi, the prime minister of the empress. As
he grew up, he was full of the _Yamato Damashii_, or the spirit of
unconquerable Japan.

This Takenouchi was a very venerable old man, who was said to be three
hundred and sixty years old. He had been the counsellor of five mikados.
He was very tall, and as straight as an arrow, when other old men were
bent like a bow. He served as a general in war and a civil officer in
peace. For this reason he always kept on a suit of armor under his long
satin and damask court robes. He wore the bear-skin shoes and the
tiger-skin scabbard which were the general's badge of rank, and also the
high cap and long fringed strap hanging from the belt, which marked the
court noble. He had moustaches, and a long beard fell over his breast
like a foaming waterfall, as white as the snows on the branches of the
pine trees of Ibuki mountain.

Now the empress, as well as Takenouchi, wished the imperial infant Ojin
to live long, be wise and powerful, become a mighty warrior, be
invulnerable in battle, and to have control over the tides and the ocean
as his mother once had. To do this it was necessary to get back the Tide
Jewels.

So Takenouchi took the infant Ojin on his shoulders, mounted the imperial
war-barge, whose sails were of gold-embroidered silk, and bade his rowers
put out to sea. Then standing upright on the deck, he called on Kai Riu O
to come up out of the deep and give back the Tide Jewels to Ojin.

At first there was no sign on the waves that Kai Riu O heard. The green
sea lay glassy in the sunlight, and the waves laughed and curled above
the sides of the boat. Still Takenouchi listened intently and waited
reverently. He wa