The Descent of Fujiyama
dron was filled to the top with the full, snowy grains, ready for the chopsticks of the waiting company.
Each night the master of the hut prophesied clear weather at five o’clock in the morning, and each morning he prophesied clear weather for five o’clock in the afternoon, but the wind howled, the sleet swept by in clouds, and hail rattled noisily on roof and walls. The second afternoon the master of the summit rest-hut appeared at the window, and, more dead than alive, was drawn in by the excited coolies, who helped chafe his limbs and pour cups of hot saké between his lips. The story of his battle with the storm on the open, wind-swept cone satisfied us all to wait for the clearing. An empty rice-box had forced him to attempt the journey to revictual his station, and we wondered how soon our landlord would be compelled to the same desperate effort.
On the third morning the visiting boniface and four wood-choppers decided to attempt the descent, and when the door was unbarred, the pale daylight and a changed wind, that entered the dim cave where we had been imprisoned, foretold a clearing sky. As the clouds lifted, we could see for miles down the wet and glistening mountain to a broad, green plain, sparkling with flashing diamonds of lakes, and gaze down a sheer ten thousand feet to the level of the sea. It was a view worth the three days of waiting. The summit loomed clear and close at hand, and our western mountaineers made two thousand feet of ascent in thirty minutes, the rest of us following in a more deliberate procession, as befitted the altitude. The coolies, in bright yellow oil-paper capes and hats, trooped after us like a flock of canaries, gayly decorating the dark lava paths. At the edge of the summit, on the rim of the crater, we passed under a torii, climbed steep lava steps and entered the last station—a low, dark, wretched, little wind-swept
185
