www.freeclassicebooks.com

Supposin'," continued Ward, "that we let two o' your men an' two o' ourn under

Mr. Divine, shin up them cliffs back o' the cove an' search fer water an' a site fer

camp--the rest o' us'll have our hands full with the salvage."

"Good," agreed Theriere. "Miller, you and Swenson will accompany Mr. Divine."

Ward detailed two of his men, and the party of five began the difficult ascent of

the cliffs, while far above them a little brown man with beady, black eyes set in

narrow fleshy slits watched them from behind a clump of bushes. Strange,

medieval armor and two wicked-looking swords gave him a most warlike

appearance. His temples were shaved, and a broad strip on the top of his head to

just beyond the crown. His remaining hair was drawn into an unbraided queue,

tied tightly at the back, and the queue then brought forward to the top of the

forehead. His helmet lay in the grass at his feet. At the nearer approach of the

party to the cliff top the watcher turned and melted into the forest at his back. He

was Oda Yorimoto, descendant of a powerful daimio of the Ashikaga Dynasty of

shoguns who had fled Japan with his faithful samurai nearly three hundred and

fifty years before upon the overthrow of the Ashikaga Dynasty.

Upon this unfrequented and distant Japanese isle the exiles had retained all of

their medieval military savagery, to which had been added the aboriginal ferocity

of the head-hunting natives they had found there and with whom they had

intermarried. The little colony, far from making any advances in arts or letters

had, on the contrary, relapsed into primeval ignorance as deep as that of the

natives with whom they had cast their lot--only in their arms and armor, their

military training and discipline did they show any of the influence of their

civilized progenitors. They were cruel, crafty, resourceful wild men trapped in the

habiliments of a dead past, and armed with the keen weapons of their forbears.

They had not even the crude religion of the Malaysians they had absorbed unless

a highly exaggerated propensity for head-hunting might be dignified by the name

of religion. To the tender mercies of such as these were the castaways of the

Halfmoon likely to be consigned, for what might sixteen men with but four

revolvers among them accomplish against near a thousand savage samurai?

Theriere, Ward, Simms, and the remaining sailors at the beach busied themselves

with the task of retrieving such of the wreckage and the salvage of the Halfmoon

as the waves had deposited in the shallows of the beach. There were casks of

fresh water, kegs of biscuit, clothing, tinned meats, and a similar heterogeneous

mass of flotsam. This arduous labor consumed the best part of the afternoon, and

it was not until it had been completed that Divine and his party returned to the

beach.

The Mucker