THE BIVOUAC
The armada arrived at Hakone early in the morning, and the myriad sails
stretched for miles along the low, sand-skirted beach, while the eager
men plunged and waded to the shore. The waters lay calm--scarcely a
ripple stirring their glassy surface--and long before midnight the
soldiers had bivouacked upon the sloping banks far up toward the
surrounding hills. They slumbered, and only the slow tramp of the
sentinel told of the visitation there encamped.
Shibusawa alone lingered; he could not sleep. A new responsibility had
taken hold of him, and his mind wandered into the mystic land of
infinitude. At his back lay the majestic Fujiyama, whose silent cone and
sloping sides seemed encircled with a thousand magic tales, and whose
lofty peak had inspired with awe the millions born of departed ages;
while before him spread the plains of Sagami, studded with its historic
legend, sacred temples, mammoth statues, palaces of the kings, and caves
of the gods.
The restless man thought of all these, and of how he had rambled amidst
its historic fields; climbed up and into the very heart and head of the
great Buddha, with its eyes of gold and tons of bronze, measuring fifty
feet in height and seventeen across from ear to ear; stolen on the
rock-hewn steps around the jagged cliffs at Enoshima, where juts the
rock and beats the surf, to the cave, in which dwells the lovely goddess
Benten; pilgrimaged to the lofty golden-lacquered statue of Kwannon, the
beautiful image, over sixty feet in height, of the time-honoured goddess
of mercy, recalling that he, too, had stood at her feet, in the darkened
chamber, behind the shrine, bowing with reverence, while the priests in
their sombre gowns repeated holy incantations: that he had admired the
beautiful handiwork of man as they raised and lowered the sliding
candles from foot to head on either side, and that he had gone away
again feeling better in heart and stronger of purpose--more fitted to do
his part in the mighty empire of life. These things crowded upon his
memory, and a whole world of beauty opened up as of the past and he
marvelled at its vastness and shuddered at the thought of its crumbling
before the march of progress. He asked himself if he were in the right
in hastening its downfall; if all those who had gone before, those
millions of tireless, worshipping souls, had lived in vain. Then a
broader conception dawned, and he answered:
"Yes."
He had looked beyond all this to the God who knows no image, who counts
within His fold all the suns and moons and stars and lands within a
world of worlds. He then slept, and upon arising despatched a message to
Kyoto with the news of Takara's death, and began the march toward Tokyo,
much refreshed and more confident of his mission. He had overcome the
last temptation to cling to the old, and pressed forward with a better
courage and lighter heart toward the new. He too had loved and lost,
though his God bade him have faith: Takara's did not.