Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [191]
As the distance between themselves and the floating light narrowed, they were able to see the boat quite clearly. Soon one of the men, without thinking, shouted, “Hey, there. Slow down!”
“Why?” came a response from on board.
Annoyed at having attention drawn to themselves, his companions chided the loudmouth. The boat was stopping at the next landing anyway; it was sheer stupidity to give advance warning. Now that they had, however, everyone agreed that the best thing to do would be to make their demand for the passenger then and there.
“There’s only one of him, and if we don’t challenge him outright, he may get suspicious, jump overboard and escape.”
Keeping pace with the boat, they again called out to those on board. An authoritative voice, undoubtedly the captain’s, demanded to know what they wanted.
“Bring the boat to the bank!”
“What! Are you crazy?” came the reply, accompanied by raucous laughter. “Land here!”
“Not on your life.”
“Then we’ll be waiting for you at the next landing. We have some business with a young man you’ve got on board. Wears a forelock and has a monkey. Tell him if he has any sense of honor, he’ll show himself. And if you let him get away, we’ll drag every one of you ashore.”
“Captain, don’t answer them!” pleaded a passenger.
“Whatever they say, just ignore it,” counseled another. “Let’s go on to Moriguchi. There are guards there.”
Most of the passengers were huddled in fear and talking in subdued tones. The one who had spoken so jauntily to the samurai on shore a few minutes earlier now stood mute. For him as well as the others, safety lay in keeping some distance between the boat and the riverbank.
The seven men, sleeves hitched up and hands on their swords, stayed with the boat. Once they stopped and listened, apparently expecting an answer to their challenge, but heard none.
“Are you deaf?” one of them shouted. “We told you to tell that young braggart to come to the rail!”
“Do you mean me?” bellowed a voice from the boat.
“He’s there, all right, and brazen as ever!”
While the men pointed their fingers and squinted toward the boat, the murmuring of the passengers grew frenzied. To them it looked as though the men on the shore might at any moment leap onto the deck.
The young man with the long sword stood firmly poised on the gunwale, his teeth shining like white pearls in the reflected moonlight. “There’s no one else on board with a monkey, so I suppose it’s me you’re looking for. Who are you, freebooters down on your luck? A troupe of hungry actors?”
“You still don’t know who you’re talking to, do you, Monkey Man? Watch your tongue when you address men from the House of Yoshioka!”
As the shouting match intensified, the boat neared the dike at Kema, which had both mooring posts and a shed. The seven ran forward to seal off the landing, but no sooner reached it than the boat stopped mid-river and began turning around in circles.
The Yoshioka men grew livid.
“What do you think you’re doing?”’
“You can’t stay out there forever!”
“Come in or we’ll come out after you.”
The threats continued unabated till the prow of the boat began to move toward the bank. A voice roared through the cold air: “Shut up, you fools! We’re coming in! Better get ready to defend yourselves.”
Despite the other passengers’ pleas, the young man had seized the boatman’s pole and was bringing the ferry in. The seven samurai immediately assembled around where the prow would touch shore and watched the figure poling the boat grow larger as he neared them. But then suddenly the boat’s speed picked up, and he was upon them before they knew it. As the hull scraped bottom, they fell back, and a dark, round object came sailing across the reeds and locked itself around one man’s neck. Before realizing it was only the monkey, they had all instinctively drawn their swords and sliced through the empty air around them. To disguise their embarrassment, they shouted