Page:Eminent Authors of Contemporary Japan.pdf/116

100 through them, he was roughly torn from his saddle by the branches, and was deposited headlong on the muddy bank that bordered the stream.

At that instant some old association of the past flashed into his mind, and he fancied he saw before him a brilliant yellow flame burning in the sky. It was the same bright, yellow flame he had so often watched when he had been a child, the fire that burnt under the big kitchen oven of his home. “My God! Look at the fire burning!” he muttered, and the next instant he had lost consciousness.

But did Khashoji really faint when he was thrown from his horse? It is true that he had been unconscious of any pain from his wounded neck, and he distinctly remembered lying helpless on the muddy bank of a lonely river, smeared from head to foot with mud and blood. As he lay there he gazed up into a clear blue sky, and across his vision a few branches of willows waved to and fro.

How densely blue the sky seemed to him compared with any he had ever looked at hitherto! It appeared as if he were peering from below into a gigantic, inverted jar of indigo. At the bottom of the jar, clouds like gathering foam were drifting, and as fast as they came they disappeared again behind the quivering leaves of the willows.

So was it possible that Khashoji had been unconscious? Between his eyes and the blue sky,