Jinrikisha Days in Japan
were utterly helpless, and lay supine in their corners, covered, head and all, with futons. The altitude, the cold, or the dilemma paralyzed their usually nimble faculties, and our coolies were far more useful. We could not stand upright under the heavy beams of the roof, and as the floor planks had been taken up here and there to brace the doors with, walking was difficult in that dark abode. While we grew impatient in our cage, the four little naval cadets sat, or lay, quietly in their futons, hour after hour, talking as cheerfully as if the sun were shining, their prospects hopeful, and their summer suits of white duck designed for the Eighth Station’s phenomenal climate. Throughout our incarceration the coolies dozed and waked under their futons, sitting up only long enough to eat, or play some childish game, and dropping back to reckon how much per diem would accrue to them without an equivalent of work. When we found that the smoky fireplace offered some warmth, we sat around the sunken box with our feet in the ashes and handkerchiefs to our eyes to keep out the blinding smoke.
In that intimate circle we learned the cook’s secrets, and watched him shaving off his billets of dried fish with a plane, stewing them with mushrooms and seasoning with soy and saké. This compound we found so good that our flattered landlord brought out hot saké and insisted on an exchange of healths. We noticed that in the midst of this hospitality he went and made some offering or other at his little household altar, and, writing something in a book, returned more benign and friendly than ever. The preparation of red bean and barley soups, two sweetened messes that only a Japanese could eat, and the boiling of rice seemed never to stop. Twice a day the big copper caldron was set on its stone frame half full of boiling water. When it bubbled most furiously over a brushwood fire, a basketful of freshly washed and soaked rice was poured in. In a half-hour the cal-
184
