Читать книгу Kibun Daizin; Or, From Shark-Boy to Merchant Prince - Gensai Murai - Страница 4

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THE master and his wife were engaged in conversation, but on seeing Bunkichi the merchant said, “Well, have you been to see the garden?”

“Thank you, I have enjoyed it very much,” answered Bunkichi, politely.

“Why, bless me, he has all the manners of a little samurai^[12]!” exclaimed the master to his wife. “There is no comparison between him and the other boys. But dancing attendance on a little girl is not the sort of employment for a lad who has the ambition to become the leading merchant in Japan. No, no; he wants to get into the shop as soon as he can and learn the ways of business—eh, my boy?”

12.Pronounced sahm’oo-rye. The samurai were the military class of Japan, corresponding to the knights of the middle ages in European countries.

The master exactly interpreted Bunkichi’s wishes, and Bunkichi felt very grateful to him, but he only answered: “I shall esteem it a great favor to be allowed to serve you in any way. But, master, with your leave, I would ask you: Is it true, as I hear, that there is a wanizame lately come into this bay, and that people are suffering a lot of harm from it?”

“Ah, me! Yes, it’s a sore trouble, that wanizame; our fishermen are doing nothing, our boat traffic is stopped, and if things go on in this way the place will be ruined. All sorts of attempts have been made to kill it, but, alas! all to no purpose.”

Then respectfully, in a kneeling posture, approaching nearer, Bunkichi thus addressed his master: “Master, in the request I am now going to make of you, I fear you will put me down as a child with a vain, childish notion of doing great things; none the less, I am bold to ask you, in all seriousness, will you give me leave to attempt the destruction of this wanizame?”

The master exclaimed in astonishment: “What! You think that you are going to kill the wanizame? It would be the greatest thing in the world if you could, but already every means has been tried. Whaling-men have tried to kill it with their harpoons, the hunters of wild game on the mountains have tried to shoot it with their guns; but the wanizame has defeated all their schemes, and, to say nothing of the money it has cost, several men have lost their lives in their attempts to kill it, and our citizens have given it up as hopeless. Son of a samurai though you may be, this is no task for a boy of thirteen or fourteen. No; you may have seen in the seas around Kada-no-Ura sharks of four or five feet in length, but just go out to the hill above the town and look over the bay until you catch sight of our monster. The very sight of it is enough to terrify most people.”

“You mistake me, master,” said Bunkichi, sitting up straight. “I have no thought of trying my strength against the wanizame. But I have a trick in my mind I should like to play, if you would allow me.”

“Oh, it’s a trick, is it? And what is the trick our crafty youngster is going to propose for killing the wanizame, I should like to know?” said the master, smiling.

“The plan I have is simply this: First, to make a straw figure and to fill up the inside with poison. Then I shall dress it in a man’s clothes and take it out into the bay, and, when we see the shark coming, throw it out to him to eat. Sharks are senseless creatures and ready to eat anything, so he is sure to swallow the straw man, and if he does the poison will at once take effect and kill him. That’s my plan; what do you think of it?”

“Yes; I think your plan of making a straw man is not at all a bad one, and I have little doubt, as you say, that the shark would swallow it. In that case it would certainly die and we should be free at last from our great calamity. But wait a minute; I am afraid, when the doll is made, there is nobody who will venture to take it out to the sea. People have had so many bitter lessons from trying to kill this shark that, however much money you offer, no one, I fear, will agree to take it out into the bay.”

Bunkichi without any hesitation replied: “I will undertake the task of taking the doll out for the shark to swallow. As I grew up by the seaside at Kada-no-Ura, I can row a boat well and can swim better than most people. I saw a boat just now fastened at the jetty in your garden. Please lend it to me and I will go out alone upon the bay.”

Astonished by the audaciousness of the lad, the master said: “It is too wild an idea, my boy. What if the shark upsets your boat? He will swallow you up in an instant.”

“As to what you say about drowning, that doesn’t disturb me at all. Suppose I have no luck and lose my life, there is nothing to be regretted if by my death I succeed in removing the great calamity under which many are now suffering. And, as I said before, it is my determination to become the leading merchant of Japan; but if I am to realize my ambition I must be prepared to run many risks. If fortune favors me I shall come safe through them and attain my object; if, however, this first venture goes against me, and I go out to sea and fall a prey to the wanizame, it simply means that I must accept it as the decree of fate, and, as far as my life is concerned, I am quite ready to risk it.”

The master, who was much struck by his fearless determination, worthy of the boy’s descent, said to him, “Indeed, your magnanimity is greater than ours, but for that very reason we should be all the more sorry to lose you.”

Saying this, he turned round to his wife, who whispered in his ear: “I quite agree with you: if he be swallowed up by the shark, we couldn’t possibly get another like him; send some other one instead!”

Just then in came the girl, attended by Sadakichi, who had long been waiting for the boy, and said, “Bunkichi, please be quick and make me another dragon-fly.”

Her mother, however, at once stopped the girl, saying: “Come, come; Bunkichi has something else to think about besides dragon-flies: he’s just saying that he wants to go out to sea and kill the wanizame.”

The girl was startled, for she was only a child. “Does he go alone?”

“Yes, that is what he says he will do.”

“Don’t, please, mother; I don’t like your sending him to sea.”

“Why, my child?”

“I want him to make me a bamboo dragon-fly.”

His curiosity aroused at hearing the little girl speak of the dragon-fly, the father said, “What do you wish him to make for you?”

“Oh, father, it’s a bamboo dragon-fly—an amusing toy which flies up high, whizzing,” was her confident answer.

“Ah, I see,” he remarked, as he understood the girl’s request; “that flying bamboo thing I often see when I go out on the streets. The toy, I remember, was first made by a boy of great filial virtue in a certain country district, and even here they talk about him; it is clever of you, Bunkichi, to have learned how to make them.”

Then Sadakichi interrupted, saying: “No wonder! Why, he was the hawker of the toy; I know all about it, as I saw him selling it at Kada-no-Ura.”

“Are you, then, the inventor of the toy?” asked the master, to whom the boy at once replied in the affirmative. The master, who was more than ever struck by the boy’s character, said, “Are you, then, the same boy whom all the people talk about and praise for his devotion to his parent?”

Then the girl, who remembered what had been told her a little while before, said: “Father, his family was very poor, and, as his father was laid up on his sick-bed, he sold those dragon-flies and bought medicine or a little rice for the family. He told me so.”

As she was listening to this conversation, tears stood in the mother’s eyes, and she said: “He is really a model boy, is he not? I can’t possibly let him go to sea.”

The master, who was much of the same way of thinking as his wife, answered, “Of course, I have been persuading him to give up his idea”; and, turning to Bunkichi, said, “Yes, do give it up, my boy.”

And the girl, seemingly with the intention of inspiring the boy with dread and deterring him from his purpose, remarked solemnly, “Oh, it is dreadful to be swallowed by the shark on going to sea!”

Bunkichi, having once determined, was immovable. “Sir, trading to a merchant is the same that fighting is to a knight. It has been ever regarded honorable in a knight that he should hazard his life many a time, even in his early youth. If fate be against him, he will be put to death by his enemy. The knights of old faced the dangerous issues of life or death as often as they went out to battle. As they attained to renown by passing through these ordeals, so, too, must the merchant who aspires after a leading position not shrink from braving many dangers in his life. Sir, methinks the present is the opportunity given me to try my hand; and if fate sides with me and I succeed in killing the wanizame, in future I shall have courage to venture out on other great undertakings. If one begins to be nervous at the outset, one will go on being nervous forever; but there is no fear, I think, for a man who is ready to sacrifice even his own life.”

The master, meeting with such unflinching determination, knew not how to stop him, but said: “I must confess you have more in you than I thought. I am ashamed of myself to be thus taught by you the secret of success in trade when I should be in a position to teach you. Well said, my boy; trading is to a business man what fighting is to a knight. If you begin by being weak and timid, you will never be capable of bold enterprise. If you have a mind to divine your future by embarking on this exploit, go in for it with all your might. As to the preparations for making the straw man, as far as buying the poison is concerned, I will do it all for you. You had better go up to the mountain yonder, and ascertain the place where the shark is generally to be seen coming up to the surface. You, Sadakichi, had better take him up to the Sumiyoshi^[13] bluff, and point him out the monster if it should come up and show itself on the surface of the water in the mouth of the harbor.”

13.Pronounced Soo-mee-yo’shee.

Bunkichi, who was much delighted at having gained his wish, said: “Then, sir, please let an apothecary prepare a lot of drugs which are likely to be the best poison for a wanizame, and I will go and have a lookout for the appearance of the monster.”

As he was about to start, the girl asked him, in a little voice of remonstrance, “But when will you make a dragon-fly for me, Bunkichi?”

“When I come back, miss,” was his reply.

“Come, come; he can’t be bothered about such a trifle now,” said her mother.

Meanwhile the two lads, Bunkichi and Sadakichi, hand in hand, went up to the Sumiyoshi bluff, which stood just outside the town on the eastern side of Kumano Bay. The mountain rose precipitously from the sea, whose fathomless water washed its southern base. A thick forest of pines covered the mountain, and the vibrating of their needle foliage in the breeze added a strange harp-like accompaniment to the perpetual roaring of the waves below. On reaching the summit, Bunkichi threw himself down on a knotty root of pine near the edge of a precipice and gazed out on the broad expanse of Kumano Bay. As far as his view reached, no shore could be descried; only the line where the dome of the azure sky circled the deep blue of the ocean.

After sitting thus in silent contemplation for a few minutes, Bunkichi suddenly turned round and said to Sadakichi: “Sea scenery is always fine to look at, isn’t it? I am fond of this sort of rough sea. I should like to have a swim in it.”

“Don’t talk such nonsense; you would no sooner get into it than you would be swamped,” was the reply.

“That’s just what I like. I should dive deep down into the water and get out of the whirlpool. And now, tell me where it is the wanizame generally pops out its head.”

“It generally comes out just below this headland,” the other answered, “at the mouth of the harbor.”

As the two boys were steadily gazing on the surface of the water, sure enough, up came the shark, and startled Sadakichi by cleaving the water with its back. Whether it was in frolic or in quest of prey, the monster swam to and fro, now showing its head and now its tail. Its rock-like back and its iron-like fins were horrible enough to inspire even men with awe.

Sadakichi, feeling nervous at the sight, said to his companion, “Bunkichi San, now you see the monster, you will be for giving up your grand job, I fancy.”

“What! You don’t suppose I’m frightened, do you,” was his scornful retort, “at the sight of such a little fish?”

“What do you say?” said the other.

“Well, if the chance came in my way, I might even kill a leviathan or a crocodile!”

As these two were thus talking, a gust of wind from the high Nachi Mountain swept down on the forest of Sumiyoshi and awakened the myriad tiny harps of the pines, while the waves rolled one after another against the rocks below. These sounds combined to drown the voices of the lads, one of whom seemed to be persuading the other that it was time to go back, while the other seemed to be insisting on staying a little longer to enjoy the wild scenery and to think over the issues of his scheme.