Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/228

and Yokohama were nothing to us, who always paid Japanese prices for Japanese accommodation. Finding him impervious to reason, we shouldered our bags and marched out of the house. Then he consented to receive his due, and reinstalled us on our own terms. But the hotel girls were cross and discourteous, the native visitors noisy, the food bad and badly served. As a last attempt to get the better of us, the landlord affirmed that now there was no chance of a boat being despatched to Miyajima before the following afternoon, and that the information we had gathered from a casual shopkeeper the night before, that one would sail at eight o'clock in the morning, was erroneous. But Mr. Bates had been compelled twice before to spend an extra day in one of these seaside hotels, on the plea that the boat had gone, or would only go, apparently, at the landlord's bidding. Smiling, therefore, but without hesitation, we made our own way to the wharf at seven o'clock and took our own tickets, that there might be no collusion between the hotel boy and the official who booked passengers. At eight o'clock we steamed away from Onomichi. Through clustered islands our tiny steamer threaded in and out, until Kure appeared, an important arsenal at the foot of the Aki Hills. Here we discharged some hundreds of copper slabs, and while that slow operation was in progress were amused by the animation which prevailed on the men-of-war and on the numerous sampans plying between them and the shore. About four miles away on the island of Etajima stands the Imperial Naval College. When this and other points of interest had been indicated to us by polite fellow-passengers, our attention was riveted on the labourers, who jerked the slabs from hand to hand