What depressing weather for a first landing, and how was I to find a wife through such a deluge, in an unknown country?

No matter!  I dressed myself and said to Yves, who smiled at my obstinate determination in spite of unfavorable circumstances: 

“Hail me a ‘sampan,’ brother, please.”

Yves then, by a motion of his arm through the wind and rain, summoned a kind of little, white, wooden sarcophagus which was skipping near us on the waves, sculled by two yellow boys stark naked in the rain.  The craft approached us, I jumped into it, then through a little trap-door shaped like a rat-trap that one of the scullers threw open for me, I slipped in and stretched myself at full length on a mat in what is called the “cabin” of a sampan.

There was just room enough for my body to lie in this floating coffin, which was scrupulously clean, white with the whiteness of new deal boards.  I was well sheltered from the rain, that fell pattering on my lid, and thus I started for the town, lying in this box, flat on my stomach, rocked by one wave, roughly shaken by another, at moments almost overturned; and through the half-opened door of my rattrap I saw, upside-down, the two little creatures to whom I had entrusted my fate, children of eight or ten years of age at the most, who, with little monkeyish faces, had, however, fully developed muscles, like miniature men, and were already as skilful as regular old salts.

Suddenly they began to shout; no doubt we were approaching the landing-place.  And indeed, through my trap-door, which I had now thrown wide open, I saw quite near to me the gray flagstones on the quays.  I got out of my sarcophagus and prepared to set foot on Japanese soil for the first time in my life.

All was streaming around us, and the tiresome rain dashed into my eyes.

Hardly had I landed, when there bounded toward me a dozen strange beings, of what description it was almost impossible to distinguish through the blinding rain—­a species of human hedgehog, each dragging some large black object; they came screaming around me and stopped my progress.  One of them opened and held over my head an enormous, closely-ribbed umbrella, decorated on its transparent surface with paintings of storks; and they all smiled at me in an engaging manner, with an air of expectation.

I had been forewarned; these were only the djins who were touting for the honor of my preference; nevertheless I was startled at this sudden attack, this Japanese welcome on a first visit to land (the djins or djin-richisans, are the runners who drag little carts, and are paid for conveying people to and fro, being hired by the hour or the distance, as cabs are hired in Europe).

Their legs were naked; to-day they were very wet, and their heads were hidden under large, shady, conical hats.  By way of waterproofs they wore nothing less than mats of straw, with all the ends of the straws turned outward, bristling like porcupines; they seemed clothed in a thatched roof.  They continued to smile, awaiting my choice.