Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/202

 cabin, with one small door and a ten-inch fireplace, where saké was warming for us.

Hardly had we arrived when the wind rose, the clouds shut down, and again the rain drove in dense and whirling sheets. The adventurous ones, who had pushed on to the edge of the crater to look in, were obliged to creep back to safety on their hands and knees, for fear of being swept over into that cauldron of boiling clouds and mist. It was no time to make the circuit of the crater’s rim with its many shrines, or descend the path-way, guarded by torii, to the crater’s bed. We hurried through the formalities at the temple, where the benumbed priest branded the alpenstocks, stamped our handkerchiefs and clothing, and gave us pictured certificates of our ascent to that point. Then began a wild sliding and plunging down a shoot of loose cinders to Station Number Eight, where the landlord produced a book and read our three-days’ board bill from a record of many pages. Everything was chanted out by items, even to the saké and mushrooms that had been pressed upon us as a courtesy, and it was only after many appeals for the sum total that he instinctively ducked his head and named fifty-eight dollars for the seven of us. Then ensued a deafening attack of remonstrances from men and valets, threats and invectives in Japanese and English, lasting until the inn-keeping Shylock agreed to take thirty dollars, received this moiety cheerfully, and bade us adieu with many protestations of esteem.

Rubber and gossamer rain-cloaks were worse than useless in that whirlwind, and haste was our one necessity. Dress skirts were sodden and leaden masses, and mine being hung as an offering to Fuji-san, a red Navajo blanket replaced it, and enveloped me completely. A yellow-clad coolie securely fastened his rope, and we slipped, and plunged, and rolled down a shoot of loose cinders. Sinking ankle-deep, we travelled as if on 186