At times the rain fell so heavily that I closed up tightly every chink and crevice, and the noise and shaking benumbed me, so that I completely forgot in what country I was.  In the hood of the cart were holes, through which little streams ran down my back.  Then, remembering that I was going for the first time in my life through the very heart of Nagasaki, I cast an inquiring look outside, at the risk of receiving a drenching:  we were trotting along through a mean, narrow, little back street (there are thousands like it, a labyrinth of them), the rain falling in cascades from the tops of the roofs on the gleaming flagstones below, rendering everything indistinct and vague through the misty atmosphere.  At times we passed a woman struggling with her skirts, unsteadily tripping along in her high wooden shoes, looking exactly like the figures painted on screens, cowering under a gaudily daubed paper umbrella.  Again, we passed a pagoda, where an old granite monster, squatting in the water, seemed to make a hideous, ferocious grimace at me.

How large this Nagasaki is!  Here had we been running hard for the last hour, and still it seemed never-ending.  It is a flat plain, and one never would suppose from the view in the offing that so vast a plain lies in the depth of this valley.

It would, however, have been impossible for me to say where I was, or in what direction we had run; I abandoned my fate to my djin and to my good luck.

What a steam-engine of a man my djin was!  I had been accustomed to the Chinese runners, but they were nothing beside this fellow.  When I part my oilcloth to peep at anything, he is naturally always the first object in my foreground; his two naked, brown, muscular legs, scampering along, splashing all around, and his bristling hedgehog back bending low in the rain.  Do the passers-by, gazing at this little dripping cart, guess that it contains a suitor in quest of a bride?

At last my vehicle stops, and my djin, with many smiles and precautions lest any fresh rivers should stream down my back, lowers the hood of the cart; there is a break in the storm, and the rain has ceased.  I had not yet seen his face; as an exception to the general rule, he is good-looking; a young man of about thirty years of age, of intelligent and strong appearance, and a frank countenance.  Who could have foreseen that a few days later this very djin?  But no, I will not anticipate, and run the risk of throwing beforehand any discredit on Chrysantheme.

We had therefore reached our destination, and found ourselves at the foot of a high, overhanging mountain; probably beyond the limits of the town, in some suburban district.  It apparently became necessary to continue our journey on foot, and to climb up an almost perpendicular narrow path.