Page:A History of Japanese Literature (Aston).djvu/197

Rh saw this, they felt that ordinary measures would be useless, so they made a circuit by way of another bay, and, with only 1000 men, ventured on a night attack. But however brave they might be, they were no more than one hair upon a bull or one grain of rice in a granary. Attacking with so small a force, they slew several tens of thousands of the enemy, but in the end were all made prisoners. They were bound with cruel cords, and their hands nailed to the bulwarks of the line of vessels.

"No further resistance was possible. All the men of Kiushiu fled to Shikoku and the provinces north of the Inland Sea. The whole Japanese nation was struck with panic, and knew not what to do. Visits to the shrines of the Shinto gods, and public and secret services in the Buddhist temples, bowed down the Imperial mind and crushed the Imperial liver and gall-bladder. Imperial messengers were despatched with offerings to all the gods of heaven and earth, and all the Buddhist temples of virtue to answer prayer, great and small alike, throughout the sixty provinces. On the seventh day, when the Imperial devotions were completed, from Lake Suwa there arose a cloud of many colours, in shape like a great serpent, which spread away towards the west. The doors of the Temple-treasury of Hachiman flew open, and the skies were filled with a sound of galloping horses and of ringing bits. In the twenty-one shrines of Yoshino the brocade-curtained mirrors moved, the swords in the Temple-treasury put on a sharp edge, and all the shoes offered to the god turned towards the west. At Sumiyoshi sweat poured from below the saddles of the four horses sacred to the deities, and the iron shields turned of themselves and faced the enemy in a line."

(Many more similar wonders follow.)