At nine o’clock, the wind shifting to the southward, and the sky lowring, we tacked and stood off to the E., and soon after, we saw a vessel, close in with the land, standing along the shore to the northward, and another in the offing, coming down on us before the wind.  Objects of any kind, belonging to a country so famous, and yet so little known, it will be easily conceived, must have excited a general curiosity, and accordingly every soul on board was upon deck in an instant, to gaze at them.  As the vessel to windward approached us, she hauled farther off shore; upon which, fearing that we should alarm them by the appearance of a pursuit, we brought the ships to, and she passed ahead of us, at the distance of about half a mile.  It would have been easy for us to have spoken with them; but perceiving, by their manoeuvres, that they were much frightened, Captain Gore was not willing to augment their terrors; and, thinking that we should have many better opportunities of communication with this people, suffered them to go off without interruption.  Our distance did not permit us to remark any particular regarding the men on board, who seemed to be about six in number, especially as the haziness of the weather precluded the use of our glasses.  According to the best conjectures we were able to form, the vessel was about forty tons burthen.  She had but one mast, on which was hoisted a square sail, extended by a yard aloft, the braces of which worked forward.  Half-way down the sail, came three pieces of black cloth, at equal distances from each other.  The vessel was higher at each end than in the midship; and we imagined, from her appearance and form, that it was impossible for her to sail any otherwise than large.

At noon, the wind freshened, and brought with it a good deal of rain; by three, it had increased so much, that we were reduced to our courses; at the same time, the sea ran as high as any one on board ever remembered to have seen it.  If the Japanese vessels are, as Kaempfer describes them, open in the stern, it would not have been possible for those we saw to have survived the fury of this storm; but, as the appearance of the weather, all the preceding part of the day, foretold its coming, and one of the sloops had, notwithstanding, stood far out to sea, we may safely conclude, that they are perfectly capable of bearing a gale of wind.  Spanberg indeed describes two kinds of Japanese vessels; one answering to the above description of Kaempfer, the other, which he calls busses, and in which, he says, they make their voyages to the neighbouring islands, exactly corresponds with those we saw.[99]