Page:Tales from old Japanese dramas (1915).djvu/457

Rh still remains some hope with her unborn babe. Oh, dear lady, for the sake of the Ming dynasty, I am compelled to cruelly desecrate your body! Pardon me!" So saying, he drew his sword and with its blade opened her body. The blood immediately gushed forth, but in the midst of it there appeared a beautiful boy, uttering his first cry of infancy. Go Sankei was overjoyed at seeing this, and he tore off the sleeve of the dead lady's dress and wrapped the baby in it. "Stay!" he reflected. "If the enemy discover the Royal mother's dead body, and find that the child is missing, they will search till they find it."

So drawing his dagger, he plunged it into his own child's heart, and put the tiny corpse into the dead lady's body. Then he said to himself: "All is well." After that he went away with the baby Prince in his bosom, hot tears of grief fast rolling down his cheek. It was a tragedy so terrible as to be almost inconceivable.

In the meantime. Go Sankei's wife Ryūka and Princess Sendan had also come to a place of safety. But, as they were hotly pursued by the enemy's troops, they hid among a thicket of reeds by the sea-shore. A Tartar officer named Godatsu took