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ARRESTED AND IN PRISON. 235
tain street and house named in ink on a label of
cedar-wood stuck in the rattan binding.
Here was a quandary. A gentleman unused to
bearing the shoulder-yoke or burden-pole to be a
tea-carrier ! He could indeed have hired more stalwart
legs and shoulders to transport the burden, but
in Yedo, not to say the guard-house at Kanagawa,
would he not be recognized and detected if he
accompanied the porters ?
There was nothing, however, to be done but to
obey, and so along with three laborers he was put
into a boat and rowed over to Kanagawa, where they
rested for the night in one of the cheap inns.
the three other men with Okuma were
Fortunately
not of his gang, and were strangers to him as well
as he to them.
Lying awake that night even after the heavy
boom of the midnight-proclaiming temple-bell had
been followed by the far-off tinkle of eight bells,
from amid the twinkling lights of the American
squadron Okuma imagined he heard, above the noise
of the snoring of the sleepers, the low crooning of
the peculiar song of the push-cart men as they drive
the untired wooden wheels of their heavily loaded
carts. He listened, and at the end of every line
heard the name Kichibe'i, which was his humble
friend's own name.
'Hai, hai, hai, da, ho, hoi Hai, hai, ho, Kichib6il"
Going out into the garden near the hedge, whence
the sound proceeded, a figure rose and a low voice
said :