Heart of a Samurai

by Margi Preus

  Manjiro stared after him for a long moment. His threat did not have menace in it, and it was almost as if Jolly were warning him of something—or someone—else.

  27

  WHISTLING UP A WIND

  August 1847 (4th Year of Kokoa, Year of the Sheep)

  anjiro was where he was supposed to be: high in the rig. He was looking where he was supposed to be looking: out to sea. But he was supposed to be watching for whales, and he was not.

  He would have liked to be alone, but he wasn’t. Daniel, a young green hand, was up there with him, his husky voice pounding Manjiro with questions. “What am I supposed to be looking for?” (Whales.) “What kind of whales?” (Any kind.) “How will I know if I see any?” (Spouts.) “What do I do if I see any?” (Tell me first—just to make sure.) “But how do I know that you won’t take credit for it if I see whales and tell you first? Then you’ll get the silver dollar instead of me.” (Fine, tell everyone, but then you’ll feel stupid when it’s a false alarm and the whaleboats are already lowered and manned. Trust me, I’ve done it.)

  “All right,” Daniel said, “I’ll do as you say. But how am I supposed to see whales first if you’re here? I mean, you’ll spot them and I’ll never get credit.”

  Drawing of three sailors at the ship’s stern

  “Listen, Daniel, I’ll let you in on a secret.”

  “A secret? What secret?”

  “I’m not looking for whales. So if there are any, you’ll see them first.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I’m looking for land.”

  “What land?”

  “My country.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Japan.”

  “Oooh,” Daniel said, “I hear that place is very dangerous.” He drew a finger across his throat. “If you land there, they eat you.”

  “No, they don’t eat people.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear—especially on this ship,” Manjiro said.

  It had been a hard voyage. What there was of food had been infested with weevils; the crew was surly and unfriendly, and they had hardly even seen whales, much less caught any. Except for his old friend Itch—now, because he was first mate, respectfully called Mr. Aken—Manjiro had grown used to being shunned. Small groups of gathered men, whether telling stories or singing chanteys, would fall suddenly quiet when he approached. Although he and Jolly had avoided a confrontation, Jolly was generally surly. Captain Davis didn’t make the voyage any easier; he was prone to fits of temper.

  Manjiro could hear him scolding someone below.

  “Lucky we’re way up here, out of the way of the captain, eh, Mr. Mung? They say he’s ‘wet as a scrubber,’ whatever that means.”

  Davis did have a temper, Manjiro thought, but was he really daft?

  “The others say you’re friendly with him—you were friends aboard the John Howland.”

  “We were …,” Manjiro said.

  “Do you think it’s true what else they say? That we can’t catch whales because there’s a Jonah on board? What’s a Jonah, anyway?”

  “A Jonah,” Manjiro said, “is a person who brings bad luck to a ship.” He wondered who the crew considered a Jonah and was about to ask when he was interrupted by a shout and an outburst from below. Had someone sighted whales while both he and Daniel were asleep on the job? He swept his eyes over the sea, looking for a spout or flukes, and then saw the dark streaks in the water. Schools of fish, just below the surface.

  “Bonito!” came the cry.

  Manjiro handed Daniel the wigwag, the whale pointer. “You’re on your own now,” he said. “I’ll go down and lend a hand. I used to be a fisherman, somewhere close to here as a matter of fact.” Daniel stayed aloft while Manjiro hurried down the ratlines.

  Whaleboats were lowered and crews of whale men turned into fishermen. It was a relief to have work to do, and Manjiro kept his hands busy and his head down. Years ago, the day he and his friends had found the school of mackerel before the storm, the boats had filled with glistening fish, just as they did now.

  A shout roused him from his memory. “Mung!” Daniel called down from the topgallant. He pointed the wigwag toward the open sea. Following the pointer, Manjiro caught a glimpse of something there, then nothing. He stopped for a moment to let his eye wander back to that spot.

  “Your glass, Mr. Aken?” he asked, and Itch passed him his telescope.

  There! Something bobbing on the water. A boat. No, a row of boats, pretty as a string of pearls. His heart leaped.

  “Japanese?” Itch asked.

  Manjiro’s mouth went dry. “Yes, I think so,” he croaked.

  “Well, heave to, man!” Itch said. “Let’s row over and have a gam with them.”

  First, Manjiro wanted to gather a few things. Back on board the Franklin, his hands shook as he tied on his old tunic—once rough and stiff, now worn so thin you could practically see through it. He tied his cloth belt around his middle and grabbed his ragged tenugui—his headband. After gathering some biscuits from the galley, he dashed to the deck and opened his mouth to call out. He couldn’t help thinking what he didn’t dare speak out loud: Home. He was going home.

  “What will I say?” he called down to Itch, waiting in the whaleboat below. “I haven’t spoken Japanese in years, except to Duffy. Did you know that horses understand Japanese?”

  “Never mind all that. Come on. Get in. Let’s go!”

  Manjiro climbed down into the boat and fidgeted with his tenugui. He was more nervous than any of the times he’d gone after whales. His heart whacked away at his ribs so hard they ached.

  As the whaleboat pulled away from the ship, he began to imagine the dramatic hills of the coastline, the sound of the boat scraping along the sand, voices speaking Japanese, the smell of fish smoking over wood fires, the rain drumming on thatched roofs, the gentle sounds of his village, and the sight of his family, their faces glowing with surprise and delight at seeing him. His mouth watered at the thought of the nice thick slab of bean jelly they would fix for him to welcome him home.

  The splash of oars from the fishermen’s boats made him turn his head. They were preparing to row away.

  “No!” The word charged out of his mouth. He began again, in Japanese. “Please,” he said, “be so kind—wait a moment?”

  One boat lingered while the others rowed away. Aken and Manjiro approached the boat, but the fishermen’s faces had become like masks.

  “They look worried,” Itch whispered.

  “They are,” Manjiro said. “Seeing you is like seeing a goblin. Maybe I seem like one, too.” He realized now that it would be hard to trust a person dressed like a beggar, yet who rode aboard a mighty ship, who consorted with foreign devils and spoke in a foreign tongue. “Don’t worry,” he said, more to himself perhaps than to Itch. “I’m sure it will be all right once I speak with them.”

  The fishermen kept their oars in the water, but waited until his boat reached theirs. They took the offered biscuits and in turn offered him some of their catch of bonito.

  “Thank you. That is kind,” he said in Japanese, “but we have caught plenty.” The words came out of his mouth sounding stiff and rusty.

  They stared at him blankly and gestured for him to take some fish.

  “No, thank you very much,” he said again, “we don’t need any fish.”

  They spoke among themselves, and Manjiro felt a surge of panic when he realized that he could not understand what they were saying. Their dialect was too different from his own. Perhaps they lived far from his village. Even he had spoken a different dialect from Denzo and the other fishermen, and they only lived a few villages apart.

  There were a moment of silence, when all Manjiro could hear were waves lapping at the side of the boat and the achingly familiar sound of straw sandals scraping the wood bottom as the fishermen shuffled their feet.

  Surely they could understand somethin
g, Manjiro thought, and he said slowly and clearly in his best Japanese, “Can you take me with you?”

  They withdrew, visibly shifting their weight away from him.

  It was too much to ask them to take him with them. They were afraid, and rightly so—their lives would be endangered—he saw that now.

  “Perhaps you can take a message,” he said, “a message for my mother?” He dug in his trouser pocket for his letter. Sounds of surprise from the fishermen made him remember his own amazement the first time he’d seen pockets.

  He held the letter out toward them, but they stared at the envelope like it might contain poison.

  “It’s just a simple message,” he said, “for my mother. It only says one thing: ‘I am alive.’”

  He held the envelope out again, but no one reached to take it. In fact, every hand on the boat disappeared.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please …”

  He knew they would not take the message. Already, they were hoisting the sail, manning the tiller, stowing the oars.

  And then they sailed away. Away toward the low, dark islands he could imagine in his mind’s eye, the islands he knew as home, taking his heart with them.

  28

  A MOMENT

  ung!” Captain Davis glowered down at him. “Trying to desert the Franklin?”

  “No, sir! I … we …,” Manjiro stammered. “You promised that if we got close enough I could make a try for home. Don’t you remember? Let me have a whaleboat, Captain.” He glanced over his shoulder at the receding fishing fleet. If only he could go now, so he could follow them! “I can row from here,” he begged.

  “I can’t spare a whaleboat. You should know that,” Davis said.

  “Send a crew with me then, to bring the boat back.”

  “What? Endanger my crew? Where would I be without a crew? Do you expect me to sail this vessel without a crew?”

  “Just a few mates, sir.”

  “Blood and thunder, no!” Captain Davis turned away, cursing. “Trying to steal one of my fine cedar whaleboats! And with white cedar plank up a full three percent!” he yelled, bringing his walking stick down with a crack on the decking. “If you want to go to China, ye can swim there!” Davis stomped away, whacking his walking stick against everything he passed, so the deckhands leaped out of his way. “By jiminy, if you try that again, you’ll be punished for desertion! You hear me?”

  29

  THE SEA TURTLE

  February 1848 (1st Year of Kaei, Year of the Monkey)

  nother year passed. Whale sightings were few, and most whale hunts unsuccessful. The crew was already surly and the captain restless. Then the wind died. The sea was like an enormous silver platter; hot sunlight glinted mercilessly off it. Days and days passed without a breath of wind, and the vessel sat unmoving, its sails hanging listlessly.

  The crew was as listless as the sails. A sailor pushed a wet mop about halfheartedly, in a futile effort to cool the decking. Two others slowly carved away at some whalebone, trying to create in their scrimshaw the excitement they lacked on board. Several tended the blisters they’d earned after the rowing they’d done the day before. The captain had insisted they try to tow the Franklin out of the doldrums. After they’d been rowing for hours in the blazing sun, blisters rose on their hands and backs.

  Small clumps of men cast sullen glances at Manjiro as he passed. A group whispering near the bulwark was suddenly silent as he walked by. Manjiro had become accustomed to this and had ceased to care. Ever since the day he had tried to speak to the Japanese fishermen, he didn’t care about anything.

  He leaned against the mainmast and stared out at the sea, trying to remember what had motivated him before. As if through a gauzy cloth, he remembered that he had desperately wanted to go home. But now he knew that would never happen.

  It didn’t matter anyway, Manjiro told himself. He wouldn’t be accepted at home anymore. Better to live out his days in the middle of this endless, motionless sea. If they didn’t make landfall soon, there might not be many of those days left anyway. The little water they had was brackish and foul, the pork moldy, and the biscuits more weevil than bread. Some of the men were suffering from scurvy.

  A sharp voice punctured the quiet. “No wind yet? No whales, neither, I suppose.”

  Manjiro identified the voice as the captain’s, speaking to the sailors on the quarterdeck. He couldn’t see Captain Davis, and since he was hidden by the mast, neither could the captain see him.

  The crew was silent. No one wanted to cross Captain Davis. He’d started out with tongue-lashings, moved on to lashings with the “cat,” and had now taken to stalking about the deck waving a musket.

  “I know there’s the superstitious among ye. Don’t think that I don’t know there’s talk of a Jonah aboard.”

  Was it the captain the crew thought was the Jonah? Or—Manjiro swallowed hard—was he the one they blamed for their bad luck?

  “Is it you, stripe pants?” Captain Davis spoke to Wilcox. “You, eye patch?” That to Grimley. “Nay, I think ye all know who the Jonah is, don’t ye? Where is he? The time is come to tend to it.”

  Manjiro held his breath. The crew knew where he was. Would they do what he’d heard they did to Jonahs—would they throw him overboard?

  “If none of ye lubbers will fetch him, I’ll start pitching ye into the sea, one by one. Who should I start with? One’s as worthless as another. Here’s the old, half-blind man—who’d miss him? Here’s just a child, worthless, too—a green hand!”

  When he heard Daniel squeak as if squeezed, Manjiro flew out from behind the mast. A long moment passed as the sullen faces of the crew regarded him, and he them. He looked at the angry, twisted face of the captain, who had once been his friend. Daniel’s frightened face pleaded to Manjiro from under Davis’s arm.

  “There he is,” Davis said. “He knows himself where the fault lies—take hold of him!”

  A shout from the port side of the ship distracted everyone. The captain dropped Daniel, who darted away, and the crew scurried to the bulwark to look. Something floated on the surface of the water. Like a large shadow, a giant sea turtle drifted into view. Manjiro felt a chill race through him when this creature from the watery depths turned its dark eye on him.

  “Fresh meat!” hollered one of the mates.

  “Catch it!” a sailor cried.

  “Kill it!” shouted another.

  Someone snatched a knife out of another man’s hands and flung it at the creature, with cries of protest from the owner of the knife. The knife struck the turtle’s head, slicing into its hide, then glanced off and was lost to the sea. Blood oozed from the wound, staining the water purple.

  “Lower a boat!”

  “A net!”

  “Harpoons!”

  The turtle paddled in an uneven circle, then dove.

  Manjiro watched for a moment, then pulled a short knife from his belt, kicked off his shoes, and in one powerful bound leaped up onto the rail, over the side, and into the water.

  Down, down he plunged into the murky green sea, his knife slicing the water ahead of him. Bubbles and a wispy trail of blood rose like smoke from the descending turtle. Manjiro followed it down.

  When his hand struck the leathery shell, he curled his fingers around a flipper. He felt himself jerked and pulled by the beast, and was surprised at its strength and speed. Everything seemed to fall away from him as he raced through the brilliant shades of blue and green. Bubbles percolated along his skin, cool as ice.

  He had saved the captain the trouble of throwing him into the sea by doing it himself. But he wasn’t just sinking—he and the turtle were going somewhere with great purpose, hurtling toward something. Time fell away; there were just the two of them and the silence.

  When he was young, Manjiro’s mother had told him the story of Urashima Taro. Taro was a poor fisherman who rescued a turtle from some mean boys who were tormenting it. The turtle rewarded Taro by taking him away to an enchanted world und
er the sea.

  He could hear his mother’s voice telling the story of this boy and the princess he loved in the undersea kingdom. The princess wore a dress of shimmering pink shells, each one twinkling like a star, with glittering jewels woven into her hair.

  “Twenty maids attended her, each in a dazzling dress of abalone and pearl,” his mother’s voice said in his ear. “In the palace a banquet table was laden with … Why are you listening to this silly story, child? You’ll drown if you don’t let go and swim up!”

  Can’t …, Manjiro thought. Turtle is taking me to that place….

  “You know how the story turns out. Taro lives the life of a prince, but what does he end up wanting more than anything?”

  To go home, Manjiro thought. To go home to see his old parents. Taro wanted this so badly that he left the beautiful princess and the glittering kingdom for it. Manjiro did not need to go to the undersea kingdom to know that was what he wanted, too—more than anything else.

  He would swim up, Manjiro decided. He would swim up, breathe, and live. He would find a way to go home. He would find his old friends, and they would all go home together.

  All of this, yes. But first, the turtle. How many times on Bird Island had he looked longingly at the sea turtles floating on the sea? Only once in five long moons had Manjiro managed to kill a turtle, and then it had been a small one.

  He groped for the head. His fingers found the ropey neck, and he brought the knife across the turtle’s throat in one swift movement.

  He would recite a sutra for the turtle later. Right now, he needed air. Urgently. Desperately.

  Gripping the turtle’s flipper, Manjiro began to swim up. Up and up he kicked, towing the heavy carcass behind him. His lungs about to burst, he knew he had to breathe. If there was no air to be had, it would have to be a breath of water, but breathe he must.