Tales of Old Japan - Maybe You Like It

noble Samurai; and if these two good gentlemen had the worst of it just
now, it was mere luck—that's all."
So, after the usual compliments had been exchanged, Chôbei sat down
by Jiurozayémon, and the attendants brought in wine and condiments.
Before they began to drink, however, Jiurozayémon said—
"You must be tired and exhausted with your walk this hot day, Master
Chôbei. I thought that perhaps a bath might refresh you, so I ordered my
men to get it ready for you. Would you not like to bathe and make yourself
comfortable?"
Chôbei suspected that this was a trick to strip him, and take him unawares
when he should have laid aside his dirk. However, he answered
cheerfully—
"Your lordship is very good. I shall be glad to avail myself of your
kind offer. Pray excuse me for a few moments."
So he went to the bath-room, and, leaving his clothes outside, he got
into the bath, with the full conviction that it would be the place of his
death. Yet he never trembled nor quailed, determined that, if he needs
must die, no man should say he had been a coward. Then Jiurozayémon,
calling to his attendants, said—
"Quick! lock the door of the bath-room! We hold him fast now. If he
gets out, more than one life will pay the price of his. He's a match for any
six of you in fair fight. Lock the door, I say, and light up the fire under
the bath; 45 and we'll boil him to death, and be rid of him. Quick, men,
quick!"
So they locked the door, and fed the fire until the water hissed and
bubbled within; and Chôbei, in his agony, tried to burst open the door,
but Jiurozayémon ordered his men to thrust their spears through the
partition wall and dispatch him. Two of the spears Chôbei clutched and
broke short off; but at last he was struck by a mortal blow under the ribs,
and died a brave man by the hands of cowards.
That evening Tôken Gombei, who, to the astonishment of Chôbei's
wife, had bought a burying-tub, came, with seven other apprentices, to
fetch the Father of the Otokodaté from Jiurozayémon's house; and when
the retainers saw them, they mocked at them, and said—
"What, have you come to fetch your drunken master home in a litter?"
45.This sort of bath, in which the water is heated by the fire of a furnace which is
lighted from outside, is called Goyémon-buro, or Goyémon's bath, after a notorious
robber named Goyémon, who attempted the life of Taiko Sama, the famous general
and ruler of the sixteenth century, and suffered for his crimes by being boiled to
death in oil—a form of execution which is now obsolete.
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