Page:Eminent Authors of Contemporary Japan.pdf/115

Rh ! And how detestable are the two fighting powers, China and Japan!

“But even more abominable than these are all the human beings who have in any way been responsible for making me a soldier. They are all my enemies! Through the stupidity of these people I am obliged to give up my life and leave the world in which I still have so many things to do. Alas! what an idiot I have been to have allowed myself to be the tool of circumstance and to have let these people do just as they liked with me!”

These thoughts surged through his brain one after another as poor Khashoji continued on his mad stampede through the high millet-fields.

Being surprised by the rush of the horse, flocks of quail here and there started up in confusion. The horse paid little heed to anything. It only felt its master clinging to its back, sometimes nearly falling from the saddle, but on and on it galloped, with froth dripping from its mouth.

Khashoji might have continued his perilous journey on the back of his horse for that whole day, and he might have kept going until the copper-hued sun had sunk in the western sky, complaining to heaven in his misery and groaning incessantly. But where the fields gradually began to slope down towards a narrow and dirty river which ran through the tall millet-fields, a few willow-trees, with their lower boughs still covered with withered leaves, stood solemnly in his way on the brink of the stream. Just as his horse made a dash