A Pioneer in Yokohama by C.T. Assendelft de Coningh

Author:C.T. Assendelft de Coningh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Published: 2012-08-28T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

A few days later, we both would have preferred a nighttime fright, because all the night watches in the world could not protect us, and we took flight as quickly as the late quartermaster did when he was pursued by the pikemen of the Bey.

—It was unseasonably mild during the days; the evenings, especially, were almost oppressive and dead calm, the kind we associate with the brewing of a storm. Normally, after the light was lit, I had administrative affairs to update, while Jan, as he would say, “stowed the property and cleaned up the galley debris.” Door and windows, all was bolted tight; the weapons lay, ready to grab, on the table, for on these evenings, as ever, we followed Cromwell’s orders to his army, “pray to God and keep your powder dry!”1 like a sacred watchword. I had again offered my rattan chair to my faithful servant, to whom I willingly listened, and when he sat quietly, he acknowledged his thanks for the “gentleman’s life,” as he called it, that he presently enjoyed, and immersed himself in deep philosophical reflections on our present situation. “It is all too true, sir!” he said. “If there were no murders here, then things would really, by my way of thinking, be perfect. But at sea, what do you have there? You always have to deal with nature; storms, high sea, the pull of currents, reefs, all things that one can do nothing about. But on the shore, one has literally no need of nature. So long as the people take care that the chimney continues to smoke and everyone does their work, then nature makes no difference, none, nil, nix.”

Without entirely agreeing, I had to grant him that here we did not have to examine every cloud, never had to run the pump to keep from sinking into the ground, and had no need to measure out the charts so we didn’t burst by running into some reef in the night.—“Hello!” I interrupted myself, “what have we here now?”

The lantern began wobbling by itself, slowly moving off the table, and we had imperceptibly been lifted off our chairs.

“What the devil!” growled Jan, springing up. “Have they tunneled under this hovel?”

There was no time to answer. A sort of underground rumbling could be heard, and at the same moment the fire roared, the shack snapped and cracked around us as if it would collapse, and the ground swelled under our feet. Jan, who expected nothing from nature ashore, in the belief that a band of murderers wanted to throw us to the ground of the hut, rose with sword and revolver and shot and stabbed like a lunatic through the cracking outside walls. I hastened toward the front door, which I unbolted with a jerk. Wobbling like a drunk, I looked out and saw, in the moonlight, a great wave like a foaming wall of water thundering up the beach.

“An earthquake!” I shouted. “For God’s sake Jan, save yourself, the sea is coming inside.

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