Iroha worried about him. Not just about his body, but his soul. She had heard about his threat to decapitate the captain on the very deck of his ship. And she had seen and heard him threaten others in the days since the shipwreck. A samurai had the right to kill a commoner, of course, but the right was not exercised often.
Iroha had hoped that once they arrived in the New World, the psychic scars of his exile would heal, like a pond thawing out in the spring after being frozen all winter. But now, it seemed that the damage was irreversible, like the charring of a stick of firewood. Iroha prayed that Deusu would relieve his troubled spirit, since he was now beyond Iroha’s reach.
At last, Nagatoki spoke. “I am very sorry, Iroha-hime, but it is time we boarded the rafts.”
South Bay, near modern Alviso, California
There had only been two Dutch-made spyglasses on the Sado Maru, Lord Matsudaira’s, and the captain’s. Since the captain had gone with Lord Matsudaira northward, he had—rather grudgingly—given his scope to Hachizaemon, the leader of the sailors who had remained with Iroha-hime.
In due course, Hachizaemon made a discovery. “Matsuoka-san, I think I can see the end of the bay. And there’s an Indian on the shore.”
“Just one?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Armed?”
“He has some kind of bow. But he appears to be watching something. He is not looking our way.”
“He is a hunter perhaps,” Matsuoka suggested. “He waits for some animal to emerge from its burrow. Or to return to it.”
“I will question him!” one of the samurai, Sanada Saburo, announced. “He can tell us where to find food and water.”
How? Hachizaemon thought. It’s not as though the Indians speak Japanese. But since he also thought his head belonged on his shoulders, and not bobbing about in the South Bay, he kept this opinion to himself.
Saburo stepped off the raft and onto what looked like land. It wasn’t land, it wasn’t water; it was something in-between, a mud flat. There were mud flats along much of the shore of San Francisco Bay, but they were especially extensive here. Indeed, the tide was at slack low water, so the real shore was quite far off.
Matsuoka ordered the rafts to hold their position until the samurai reported. Seeing one Indian didn’t mean that in fact there was only one Indian, he told Iroha.
Saburo had made it halfway to shore when he ran into real difficulty. He stepped on a softer patch and suddenly sank several feet. The mud was at waist level and he started flailing about, trying to climb out of this unexpected hole.
That was a bad idea. He found himself several inches deeper in the mud than he had been previously. The mud, in fact, was doing a good imitation of quicksand. The quick movements of his legs and arms created a vacuum in the viscous mud, and the vacuum sucked him down.
Hachizaemon ordered his men to pole the lead raft forward, but they couldn’t move it far enough to reach the encumbered samurai; after a point, given how low the tide was currently, there wasn’t enough water to float the raft.
When the tide rose, that would change, but that would create its own problems. Like drowning Saburo.
From time to time, Hachizaemon looked through his spyglass at the same rocks and trees. Yes, he thought, the water was rising. The question was now whether that rising water would carry the raft within rescue range before it drowned the samurai.
“What is that Indian doing now?” asked Iroha. “Is it some kind of dance?”
Hachizaemon trained the telescope on the native. “I don’t know. He points toward us, he points toward himself, he throws himself flat on his back, and then he moves his arms and legs very slowly.”
“Could he be telling Saburo-san how to save himself from the mud?” She started shouting instructions to the endangered samurai. Whether because her voice was too soft, or because he didn’t trust survival advice from a woman, he ignored her. And sank a few more inches.
Matsuoka had been thinking about Iroha-hime’s interpretation of the Indian’s actions, and at last he decided that she was right. He repeated her advice, but as an order. A stentorian one.
Saburo obeyed, and stopped sinking. Soon, the lead raft was able to draw up to him, and he was pulled on board by his older brother, Jiro.
The sailors, being commoners, did their best to look everywhere except at the bedraggled Saburo. Saburo’s fellow samurai felt no such compunction, and started joking about catching the largest mudfish they had ever seen, a five footer at least.
Oakland, California, and Points North
The crossing of the Bay was uneventful, but when Lord Matsudaira’s party reached the opposite shore, by modern Oakland, they found a vast marsh. They had to proceed some distance inland to find rocks for building the message cairn.