The Kingdom of Slender Swords

CHAPTER LIII
A RACE WITH DAWN

The Japanese stared after him mystified, then with a philosophic objurgation, turned and drove the sweating horses home at a walk.

Daunt ran to a low door in the long garage. The key was on a ring in his pocket. He went in, locking the door behind him. There were no electric lights—he had been there heretofore only by day—and the carriage lamps made only a subdued glimmer that was reflected from the polished metal of the great winged thing resting on its carrier. He threw off his evening coat and set feverishly to work. After its single trial the new fan-propeller had been unshipped for a slight alteration, and the flanges had not yet been reassembled. There were delicate adjustments to be made, wire rigging to be tautened, a score of minute tests before all could be safe and sure. He worked swiftly and with concentration, feeling his mind answering to the stress with an absolute coolness.

At length the last attachment was in place, the final bolt sent home and one of the lamps lashed close in the angle of the wind screen. He took his place and the engine started its familiar double rhythm: pst-pst—pst-pst—pst-pst, as the explosive drop fell faster and faster. He leaned and broke the clutch which held the big double doors of the building. They swung open and he threw on the gear.

And suddenly, as the propeller began to spin, in the instant the Glider started in its rush down the guides, Daunt was aware that some one had darted through the doors. He had a flashing view of a white, disheveled face, heard a cry behind him—then the prow of the Glider tilted abruptly, the air whistled past the screens, the great flat field sank away, and he was throbbing steeply upward, against the sweep of the wind.

Daunt threw himself forward—the bubble in the spirit-level clung to the top of its tube. Rapidly he warped down the elevation-vanes till slowly, slowly, the telltale bubble crept to the middle of the level. What was the matter? The engine was working well, yet there was a sense of heaviness, of sluggishness that was unaccountable. He looked to either side, before him, behind him.

His fingers tightened on the clutches. Just forward of the whirling propeller he made out the figure of a man, lying flat along the ribs of the Glider's body, clutching the steel guys of the planes, looking at him.

For a moment he stared motionless. It was this extra weight that had sent the Glider reeling prow-up—had made it unresponsive to control. The man who clung there had aimed to prevent the flight! Daunt leaned to let the full beam of the flaring lamp go past him. A quick intuition had told him whose were the eyes that had glittered across the throbbing fabric; but the face he saw now was infuriate with a new look that made him shiver. It was incarnate with the daredevil of terror. Phil had been a drunkard; he was drunk now with the calculate madness of overmastering fear. As he gazed, a flitting, irrelevant memory crossed Daunt's mind, of a day at college, years before, when by a personal appeal, he had saved Phil from the disgrace of expulsion. And now it was Phil—Phil!—clinging there, with desperate, hooked fingers, struggling to consummate a crime that must sink him for ever!

Pst-pst—pst-pst—pst-pst; on the Glider drove. With a fierce effort, Daunt crushed down the sense of unreality and swiftly weighed his position.

The other was directly in front of the propeller, a perilous place. Only the guy-wire was in his reach. Between them was a shuddering space. To land in the darkness to rid the aëroplane of that incubus, was impossible. He must go on. Could he win with such a terrible handicap? He set his teeth. Tilting the lateral vanes, he soared in a wide serpentine, peering into the deep, resounding dark below.

Tokyo lay a vast network of tiny pin-pricks of fire. He had never been so high before, had been content to sweep the tree-tops. To the left a bearded scimitar of light, merged by blackness, marked the bay. Daunt swung parallel with this. Pst-pst—pst-pst—pst-pst. The wind tore in gusts through the structure, the planes vibrating, the guys humming like the strings of a gigantic harp. His clothing dragged at his body. He was too high; he leaned over the mass of levers and the Glider slid down a long, steep descent, till in the starlight he could see the blue-gray blur of roofs, the massed shadows of little parks of trees. Now he was passing the edge of the city—now below him was the gloom of the rice-fields. A low sobbing sound came in the wind; it was the bubbling chorus of the frogs, and across it he heard the bark of a peasant's dog.

To the right a dark hill loomed without warning, with a dim congeries of red tea-houses. It was the famous Ikegami, the shrine of the Buddhist saint Ichiren, famed for its plum-gardens. It fell away behind, and now, far off, a score of miles ahead, grew up on the horizon a misty blotch of radiance. Yokohama! He swerved, heading out across the lagoon, straight as the bee flies for the shimmering spot. Pst-pst—pst-pst—faster and faster spat the tiny explosions. The Glider throbbed and sang like a thing alive, and the hum of the propeller shrilled into a scream.

Tokyo was far behind now, the pale glow ahead rising and spreading. To the right he could see the clumped lights of the villages along the railroad, Kamata—Kawasaki—Tsurumi. He dropped still lower, out of the lash of the wind.

Suddenly a flying missile struck the forward plane, which resounded like a great drum. A drop of something red fell on his bare hand and a feathered body fell like a stone between his feet. A dark carpet, dotted with foam, seemed to spring up out of the gulf. Daunt threw himself at the levers and rammed them back. The Glider had almost touched the sea—for a heartbreaking instant he thought it could never rise. He heard the curl of the waves, and a cry from behind him. Then, slowly, slowly, breasting the blast, it came staggering up the hill of air to safety.

The sky was perceptibly lightening now. Daunt realized it with a tightening of all his muscles. It was the first tentative withdrawal of the forces of the dark. Should he be in time? With his free hand he loosened the coil of the grapnel. Suddenly the chances seemed all against success. A feeling of hopelessness caught him. He thought of the two men he had left behind, waiting—waiting. What message would come to them that morning?

The engine was doing its best, every fiber of tested steel and canvas ringing and throbbing. But the creeping pallor of the night grew apace. Kanagawa:—the Glider swooped above it, left it behind. The misty glow was all around now, lights pricked up through the shadow. Yokohama was under his feet, and ahead—the darker mass toward which he was hurtling—was the Bluff.

Slowly, with painful anxiety, he swung the huge float in to skirt the cliff's seaward edge. There was the naval hospital with its flag-staff. There beyond, was the familiar break in the rampart of foliage—and there, flapping in the wind, was the awning on the flat roof of the Roost. In the dawning twilight, it seemed a monstrous, leprous lichen, shuddering at the unholy thing it hid. Daunt threw out the grapnel.

He curved sharply in, aslant to the wind, flung down his prow and swooped upon it. There was a tearing, splintering complaint of canvas and bamboo; the Glider seemed to stop, to tremble, then leaped on. Turning his head, Daunt saw the awning disappear like a collapsed kite. He caught a glimpse, on the steep, ascending roadway of a handful of naked men running staggeringly, one straggler far behind. The thought flashed through his mind that these were the cadets from the Naval College. But they would be too late! The sun was coming too swiftly. The sky was a tide of amethyst—the dawn was very near! He came about in a wide loop that took him out over the bay, making the turn with the wind. For a fraction of a second he looked down—on the Squadron of battle-ships, a geometrical cluster of black blots from which straight wisps of dark smoke spun like raveled yarn into the formless obscurity. A shrill, mad laugh came from behind him.

Daunt was essaying a gigantic figure-of-light whose waist was the flat bungalow roof. It was a difficult evolution in still sunlight and over a level ground. He had now the semi-darkness, and the sucking down-drafts of the wind that made his flight, with its driving falls and recoveries, seem the careless fury of a suicide. Yet never once did his hand waver, never did that strange, tense coolness desert him.

As he swept back, like a stone in the sling of the wind, he saw the thing he had come to destroy. It had the appearance of a large camera, set on a spidery tripod near the edge of the flat roof, its lens pointing out over the anchorage. Landing was out of the question; to slacken speed meant to fall. He must strike the machine with the body of the Glider or with the grapnel. To strike the roof instead meant to be hurled headlong, mangled or dead, his errand unaccomplished, down somewhere in that medley of roofs and foliage. The chances that he could do this seemed suddenly to fade to the vanishing point. A wave of profound hopelessness chilled his heart.

With Phil's mad, derisive laughter ringing in his ears, he dropped the Glider's stem and drove it obliquely across. The grapnel bounded and clanged along the tiling, missing the tripod by three feet. On, in an upward staggering lunge, then round once more, wearing into the wind.

There was no peal of laughter now from the man clinging to the steel rib. With the clarity of the lunatic Phil saw how close the swoop had been. The scourge of the wind and the rapid flight through the rarefied air had exalted him to a cunning frenzy. He had no terror of the moment—all his fear centered in the to-morrow. To his deranged imagination the black square on the tripod represented his safety. He had forgotten why. But Bersonin had made him see it clearly. It must not be touched! Daunt was the devil—he was trying to send him to the copper-mines, to work underground, with chains on his feet, as long as he lived!

The Glider heeled suddenly and slid steeply downward. Daunt gripped the levers and with all his strength warped up the forward plane. He felt a pang of sharpened agony. He, too, would fail! The crash was almost upon him. But the Glider hung a moment and righted. Farther and farther he twisted the laterals, till she swam up, oscillating. A jerk ran through her after framework; he turned his head. Clinging with foot and hand, his hair streaming back from his forehead, his lips wide, Phil was drawing himself, inch by inch, along the sagging guy-wire toward him.

For a rigid second Daunt could not move a muscle. Then, caught by the upper wind, the perilous tilting of the planes awoke him. He swung head on, wavered, and swooped a last time for the roof.

Pst-pst—pst-pst—Crash! The curved irons of the grapnel tore away the coping—slid, screaming. A jolt all but threw him from his seat. There were running feet somewhere far below him—a battering and shattering of glass in the piazza. He felt a sudden clearance and the big aëroplane plunged sidewise out over the bay, with a black, unwieldy weight, that spun swiftly, hanging on its grapnel.

A shout tore its way from his lips. Heedless of direction, he wrenched with his fingers to unship the grapnel chain. At the same instant the first sunbeam slid across the waves and turned the misty gloom to the golden-blue glory of morning.

And with it, as though the voice of the day itself, there went out over the water, above the sweep of the wind, a single piercing-sweet note of music, like the cry of a great, splendid bird calling to the sunrise. Fishermen in tossing sampan, and sailors on heaving junk heard it, and whispered that it was the cry of the kaminari, the thunder-animal, or of the kappa that lures the swimmer to his death. An icy blast seemed to shoot past the Glider into the zenith. Staring, Daunt realized that one of the great planes, the propeller, the after-framework, with the man who had clung to it, were utterly gone—that the Glider, like a dead bird caught by the thudding twinge of a bullet, was lunging by its own momentum—to its fall! Had Phil fallen, or was it—

Suddenly he felt himself flung backward, then forward on his face. The spreading vanes, crumpled edgewise, like squares of cardboard, were sliding down. He saw the shipping of the bay spread beneath him—the twin lighthouses, one red, one white, on the ends of the breakwater—the black Dreadnaughts—a steamer with bright red funnels—a fleet of fishing sampan putting out. All were swelling larger and larger. The wind, blowing upward around him, stole his breath, and he felt the blood beating in his temples. He heard ships' bells striking, and across the sound a temple-bell boomed clearly. A mist was coming before his eyes. Just below him was a white yacht; it seemed to be rushing up to meet him like a swan.

Thoughts darted through his brain like live arrows. The battle-ships were saved! No shameful suspicion should touch Japan's name in the highways of the world! What matter that he lost the game? What did one—any one—count against so much?

He thought of Barbara. He would never know now what she had been about to tell him that night at the Nikko shrine! He would never see her again! But she would know ... she would know!

The sound of the sea—a great roaring in his ears.

CHAPTER LIV
INTO THE SUNLIGHT

The assurance came to Barbara's heart with an infinite relief that he could not guess. At the first sight of the huge bird-like thing slipping down the sky she had known the man clinging to its framework was Daunt. The stricken moments while the wreck of the great vanes lay outspread on the water—the launch of the yacht's boat, and the lifting of the limp form over its gunwale—the cruelly kind ministrations that had brought breath back to the inert body—these had seemed to her to consume dragging hours of agony. A thunder of guns roared across the water, but she scarcely heard. Her eyes were fixed on the face to which the tide of life was returning.

Again the roar, and now the sound pierced the saturating darkness. It called the numbed senses back to the sphere of feeling—to a consciousness of an immense weariness and a gentle motion. It seemed to Daunt as though his head rested on a pillow which rose and fell to an irregular rhythm. He stirred. His eyes opened.

Memory dawned across them. Haru's story—the windy flight on the Glider—the sick sense of failure—the plunge down, and down, and the water leaping toward him! Had he failed? A third time the detonation rang out. He started, made an effort to rise. His gaze swept the sea. There, flags flying, bands playing, a line of Dreadnaughts was steaming down the harbor.

"The battle-ships!" he said, and there was triumph in his eyes.

He turned his head and saw the bishop, the silent crew, the relieved countenance of the captain. Realization came to him. Soft arms were about him; the pillow that rose and fell was a woman's heaving breast! His gaze lifted, and Barbara's eyes flowed into his. He put out a hand weakly and whispered her name.

She did not speak, but in that look a glory enfolded him. It was not womanly pity in her face—it was far, far more, something wordless, but eloquent, veiled, yet passionately tender. He knew suddenly that after the long night had come the morning, after the pain and the misunderstanding all would be well.

For an instant he closed his eyes, smiling. The darkness was gone for ever. His head was on her heart, and it was her dear arms that were lifting him up, into the sunlight, the sunlight, the sunlight!

CHAPTER LV
KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS

There came one such day when Daunt stood with Barbara by the huge stone torii at the gateway of the Mon-to temple on the Hill-of-the-Spirit. The air was softly radiant but not cold, the translucent heavens tinted with a fairy mauve, which on the horizon merged into dying hyacinth. The camelia hedges stood like blanched rows of crystalled beryl, the stalwart mochi trees were cased in argent armor, and the curving porch of the temple, the roof of the near-by nunnery, the forest of bronze lanterns and the square stone tablets in the graveyard were capped with soft rounded mounds of snow. It lay thickly over the paved space save where a wide way had been cleared to the temple steps, for the day was a saijits', a holy day, when the people gather to worship.

Across the lane they could see the Chapel lifting its white cross into the clear blue. From its chancel arch was hung a crucifix of gold-lacquer, where the declining sun, shining through the stained glass of the rose-window, each evening touched it to shimmering color. The altar to-day was fragrant with the first plum-blossoms; two hours ago the bishop, standing before it, had read the sacred office which had made them man and wife. The carriage which was to take them to Shimbashi Station waited now at the end of the lane while Barbara brought a branch of the early blooms to lay on a Buddhist grave in a tenantless garden.

In one of the farther groups before the temple steps was a miniature rick-sha drawn by a servant. It held a child who had not walked since a night when, with clenched hands and brave little heart, he had run into the path of a speeding motor-car. On the breast of his wadded kimono was a knot of ribbon at which the other children gazed in awe and wonder. It had been pinned one night to a small hospital shirt when the wandering eyes were hot with fever and the baby face pinched and white, by a lady whom Ishikichi had thought must be the Sun Goddess at very least, and before whom the attendants of that room of pain had bowed to the very mats. He knew that in some dim way, without quite knowing how, he had helped that great, mysterious something that meant the Government of Japan, and that he should be very proud of it. But Ishikichi was far prouder of the fine foreign front that had displaced the poor little shop in the Street-of-prayer-to-the-Gods.

Nearer the gateway, on the edge of the gathering, stood an old man, his face seamed and lined, but with eye clear and young and a smile on his face. The crest on his sleeve was the mon of an ancient and honored samurai family. He leaned on the arm of his adopted son—a Commander of the Imperial Navy whose name had once been Ishida Hetaro. They stood apart, regarding not the Temple, but the low building across the hedge, behind whose bamboo lattice dim forms passed and repassed.

"Look," said Barbara suddenly, and touched Daunt's arm. A woman's figure had paused at the lattice of the nunnery. She was dressed in slate-color and her delicate features and close-shaven head gave her a singularly unearthly appearance, like an ethereal and angelic boy. The little two-wheeled carriage drew up at the lattice and a slender hand reached out and patted the round cropped head of its occupant. As the vehicle was drawn away, the nun looked up and across the yard—toward the old samurai and the young naval officer. The wraith of a flush crept into her cheek. She smiled, and they smiled in return, the placid Japanese smile which is the rainbow of forbidden tears. A second they stood thus, then the slate-colored figure drew back and was gone, and the old man, supported by the younger arm, passed slowly out of the yard.

Barbara's eyes were still on the lattice as Daunt spoke. "What is it?" he asked.

"The face of the nun there," she said, with vague wistfulness. "It reminds me of some one I have known. Who can it be, I wonder!"

They crossed the yard, and entered the deserted garden. The great ruin at its side was covered with friendly shrubs and the all-transfiguring snow. The line of stepping-stones had been swept clean and beside the frost-fretted lake an irregular segment of rock, closely carved with ideographs, had been planted upright. It stood in mystic peace, looking between the snow-buried, birdless trees toward the horizon where Fuji-San towered into the infinite calm—a magical mountain woven of a world of gems, on which the sun's heart beat in a tumult. At the base of the stone slab were Buddhist vases filled with green leaves in fresh water, and in one of these Barbara placed the branch of plum-blossoms. Its pink petals lay against the brown rock like the kiss of spring on a wintry heart.

As she arranged the sprays, Daunt stood looking down on her bent head, where, under her fur hat, the sun was etching gold-hued lines on the soft copper of her hair. He had taken a yellowed envelope from his pocket.

"Do you remember, dearest," he said, "that I once told you of an old envelope in the Chancery safe bearing the name of Aloysius Thorn?"

"Yes," she answered wonderingly.

"It was opened, after his death, while you were away. It contained his will. I turned it into Japanese, as best I could, for the temple priests. It is carved there on the stone. The Ambassador gave the original to the bishop, and he handed it to me to-day for you. He thought you would like to keep it." He drew the paper from the discolored envelope and handed it to her.

She sat down on a boulder and unfolding the faded sheets, began to read aloud, in a voice that became more and more unsteady:

"Know All Men by These Presents, that I, Aloysius Thorn, of the city of Tokyo, in Tokyo-fu, Empire of Japan, being in health and of sound and disposing mind and memory, do make and publish this my last will and testament, devising, bequeathing and disposing in the manner following, to wit:

"Item: I give, devise and bequeath to Japanese children, inclusively, for and through the term of their childhood, the woods of cryptomeria, with their green silences, and the hillsides with the chirpings of bell-crickets in the sa-sa grass and the fairy quiverings of golden butterflies. I give them the husky crow and the darting swallow under the eaves. And I devise to them all lotos-pools on which to sail their straw sampan, the golden carp and the lilac-flashing dragon-fly in and above them, and the dodan thickets where the semi chime their silver cymbals. I also give to them all temple yards, wheresoever situate, and all moats, and the green banks thereunto appertaining, for their playgrounds, providing, however, that they break no tree or shrub, remembering that trees, like children, have souls. And I devise to them the golden fire of the morning and all long, white clouds, to have and to hold the same, without let or hindrance. These the above I bequeath to them, possessing no little child of my own with whom to share my interest in the world.

"To boys especially I give and bequeath all holidays to be glad in, and the blue sky for their paper kites. To girls I give and bestow the rainbow kimono, the flower in the hair and the battledore. And I bequeath them all kinds of dolls, reminding them that these, if loved enough, may some time come alive.

"Item: To young men, jointly, I devise and bequeath the rough sports of kenjuts' and of ju-jits', the shinai-play and all manly games. I give them the knowledge of all brave legends of the samurai, and especially do I leave them the care and respect for the aged. I give them all far places to travel in and all manner of strange and delectable adventures therein. And I apportion to them the high noon, with its appurtenances, to wit: the heat and burden of the day, its commotions, its absorbing occupations and its fiercer rivalries. I give to them, moreover, the cherry-blossom, the flower of bushido, which, falling in the April of its bloom, may ever be for them the symbol of a life smilingly yielded in its prime.

"To young women, I give and devise the glow of the afternoon, the soft blue witchery of pine shadows, the delicate traceries of the bamboo and the thin, low laughter of waterfalls. I devise to them all manner of perfumes, and tender spring blossoms (save in the one exception provided hereinbefore), such as the plum-blossom and the wistaria, with the red maple-leaves and the gorgeous glories of the chrysanthemum. And I give to them all games of flower-cards, and all divertisements of music, as the biwa, the flute and the samisen, and of dances whatsoever they may choose.

"Item: To the aged I bequeath snowy hair, the long memories of the past and the golden ihai on the Buddha-Shelf. I give them the echo of tiny bare feet on the tatamé, and the grave bowing of small shaven heads. I devise to them the evening's blaze of crimson glory and the amber clouds above the sunset, the pale andon and the indigo shadows, the dusk dance of the yellow lanterns, the gathering of friends at the moon-viewing place and the liquid psalmody of the nightingale. I give to them also the winter, the benediction of snow-bent boughs and the waterways gliding with their silver smiles. I give to them sufficient space to lie down within a temple ground that echoes the play of little children. And finally I bequeath to them the love and blessing of succeeding generations for the blossoming of a hundred lives.

"In testimony whereof, I, the said Aloysius Thorn—"

Barbara's voice broke off. Her eyes were wet as she folded the paper. Daunt drew her to her feet, and with his arm about her, they stood looking out across the white city lying in all its ghostly glamour—the many-gabled watch-towers above the castle walls, the glistening plateau of Aoyama with its dull red barracks, the rolling sea of wan roofs, and far beyond, the creeping olive of the bay. In the clear distance they could see the lift of Kudan Hill, and the gray pile of the Russian Cathedral. Standing in its candle-lighted nave, they had listened to Japanese choir-boys hymning the Birth in Bethlehem. The next Christmas they two would be together—but in another land!

"Minister to Persia!" she said. "I am glad of your appointment, for it means so much to your career. And yet—and yet—"

In the temple yard behind them an acolyte, wading knee-deep in the snow, swung the cedar beam of the bell-tower and the deep-voiced boom rolled out across the cradling hush. Again and yet again it struck, the waves of sound throbbing into volume through the still air. It came to them like a firm and beautiful voice, the articulate echo of the Soul of Japan.

The whinny of restive horses stole over the hedges. Silently Daunt held out his hand to her. She bent and picked a single plum-blossom from the branch and slipped it into the yellow envelope. For a last time she looked out across the distance.

"The beautiful country!" she said.

THE END