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, and seethed in violent
agitation.

What depressing weather for a first landing, and how was I to find a wife
through such a deluge, in an unknown country?

No matter! I dressed myself and said to Yves, who smiled at my obstinate
determination in spite of unfavorable circumstances:

"Hail me a 'sampan,' brother, please."

Yves then, by a motion of his arm through the wind and rain, summoned a
kind of little, white, wooden sarcophagus which was skipping near us on
the waves, sculled by two yellow boys stark naked in the rain. The craft
approached us, I jumped into it, then through a little trap-door shaped
like a rat-trap that one of the scullers threw open for me, I slipped in
and stretched myself at full length on a mat in what is called the
"cabin" of a sampan.

There was just room enough for my body to lie in this floating coffin,
which was scrupulously clean, white with the whiteness of new deal
boards. I was well sheltered from the rain, that fell pattering on my
lid, and thus I started for the town, lying in this box, flat on my
stomach, rocked by one wave, roughly shaken by another, at moments almost
overturned; and through the half-opened door of my rattrap I saw,
upside-down, the two little creatures to whom I had entrusted my fate,
children of eight or ten years of age at the most, who, with little
monkeyish faces, had, however, fully developed muscles, like miniature
men, and were already as skilful as regular old salts.

Suddenly they began to shout; no doubt we were approaching the
landing-place. And indeed, through my trap-door, which I had now thrown
wide open, I saw quite near to me the gray flagstones on the quays. I got
out of my sarcophagus and prepared to set foot on Japanese soil for the
first time in my life.

All