Last night I saw the seamen of Old Japan: to-day I shall see those of
New Japan. An apparition in the offing has filled all this little port
with excitement--an Imperial man-of-war. Everybody is going out to look
at her; and all the long boats that were lying in the alleys are already
hastening, full of curious folk, to the steel colossus. A cruiser of the
first class, with a crew of five hundred.
I take passage in one of those astounding craft I mentioned before--a
sort of barge propelled by ten exceedingly strong naked men, wielding
enormous oars--or rather, sweeps--with cross-handles. But I do not go
alone: indeed I can scarcely find room to stand, so crowded the boat
is with passengers of all ages, especially women who are nervous about
going to sea in an ordinary sampan. And a dancing-girl jumps into the
crowd at the risk of her life, just as we push off--and burns her arm
against my cigar in the jump. I am very sorry for her; but she laughs
merrily at my solicitude. And the rowers begin their melancholy
somnolent song: A-ra-ho-no-san-no-sa, Iya-ho-en-ya! Ghi! Ghi!
It is a long pull to reach her--the beautiful monster, towering
motionless there in the summer sea, with scarce a curling of thin smoke
from the mighty lungs of her slumbering engines; and that somnolent song
of our boatmen must surely have some ancient magic in it; for by the
time we glide alongside I feel as if I were looking at a dream. Strange
as a vision of sleep, indeed, this spectacle: the host of quaint
craft hovering and trembling around that tremendous bulk; and all the
long-robed, wide-sleeved multitude of the antique port--men, women,
children--the grey and the young together--crawling up those mighty
flanks in one ceaseless stream, like a swarming of ants. And all this
with a great humming like the humming of a hive,--a sound made up of
low laughter, and chattering in undertones, and subdued murmurs of
amazement. For the colossus overawes them--this ship of the Tenshi-Sama,
the Son of Heaven; and they wonder like babies at the walls and the
turrets of steel, and the giant guns and the mighty chains, and the
stern bearing of the white-uniformed hundreds looking down upon the
scene without a smile, over the iron bulwarks. Japanese those also--yet
changed by some mysterious process into the semblance of strangers.
Only the experienced eye could readily decide the nationality of those
stalwart marines: but for the sight of the Imperial arms in gold, and
the glimmering ideographs upon the stern, one might well suppose one's
self gazing at some Spanish or Italian ship-of-war manned by brown Latin
men.
I cannot possibly get on board. The iron steps are occupied by an
endless chain of clinging bodies--blue-robed boys from school, and old
men with grey queues, and fearless young mothers holding fast to the
ropes with over-confident babies strapped to their backs, and peasants,
and fishers, and dancing-girls. They are now simply sticking there like
flies: somebody has told them they must wait fifteen minutes. So they
wait with smiling patience, and behind them in the fleet of high-prowed
boats hundreds more wait and wonder. But they do not wait for fifteen
minutes! All hopes are suddenly shattered by a stentorian announcement
from the deck: 'Mo jikan ga naikara, miseru koto dekimasen!' The monster
is getting up steam--going away: nobody else will be allowed to come on
board. And from the patient swarm of clingers to the hand-ropes, and
the patient waiters in the fleet of boats, there goes up one exceedingly
plaintive and prolonged 'Aa!' of disappointment, followed by artless
reproaches in Izumo dialect: 'Gun-jin wa uso iwanuka to
omoya!-uso-tsuki dana!--aa! so dana!'
('War-people-as-for-lies-never-say-that-we-thought!--Aa-aa-aa!')
Apparently the gunjin are accustomed to such scenes; for they do not
even smile.
But we linger near the cruiser to watch the hurried descent of the
sightseers into their boats, and the slow ponderous motion of the
chain-cables ascending, and the swarming of sailors down over the bows
to fasten and unfasten mysterious things. One, bending head-downwards,
drops his white cap; and there is a race of boats for the honour of
picking it up. A marine leaning over the bulwarks audibly observes to
a comrade: 'Aa! gwaikojn dana!--nani ski ni kite iru daro?'--The other
vainly suggests: 'Yasu-no-senkyoshi daro.' My Japanese costume does
not disguise the fact that I am an alien; but it saves me from the
imputation of being a missionary. I remain an enigma. Then there are
loud cries of 'Abunail'--if the cruiser were to move now there would
be swamping and crushing and drowning unspeakable. All the little boats
scatter and flee away.
Our ten naked oarsmen once more bend to their cross-handled oars, and
recommence their ancient melancholy song. And as we glide back, there
comes to me the idea of the prodigious cost of that which we went forth
to see, the magnificent horror of steel and steam and all the multiple
enginery of death--paid for by those humble millions who toil for ever
knee-deep in the slime of rice-fields, yet can never afford to eat their
own rice! Far cheaper must be the food they live upon; and nevertheless,
merely to protect the little that they own, such nightmares must be
called into existence--monstrous creations of science mathematically
applied to the ends of destruction.
How delightful Mionoseki now seems, drowsing far off there under its
blue tiles at the feet of the holy hills!--immemorial Mionoseki, with
its lamps and lions of stone, and its god who hates eggs!--pretty
fantastic Mionoseki, where all things, save the schools, are medieval
still: the high-pooped junks, and the long-nosed boats, and the
plaintive chants of oarsmen!
A-ra-ho-no-san-no-sa, Iya-ho-en-ya! Ghi! Ghi!
And we touch the mossed and ancient wharves of stone again: over one
mile of lucent sea we have floated back a thousand years! I turn to look
at the place of that sinister vision--and lo!--there is nothing there!
Only the level blue of the flood under the hollow blue of the sky--and,
just beyond the promontory, one far, small white speck: the sail of a
junk. The horizon is naked. Gone!--but how soundlessly, how swiftly! She
makes nineteen knots. And, oh! Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami, there probably
existed eggs on board!