Explore "Jinrikisha Days in Japan" by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
From Saturday until Tuesday, three endless days and as many nights, the whirling storm kept us prisoners in the dark, smoke-filled rest-house. What had been the amusing incidents of one stormy night became our intolerable routine of life. Escape was impossible, even for the hardy mountaineers and pilgrims at the other end of the hut, and to unbar the door for a momentary outlook threatened the demolition of the shelter. A tempest at sea was not more awful in its fury, but our ears became finally accustomed to the roar and hiss of the wind, and the persistent blows it dealt the structure. The grave problem of provisioning the place in time confronted us, and after our one day's luncheon was exhausted, it became a question how long the master of the station could provide even fish and rice for forty people.
The two boys, or valets, brought by their sybarite masters, like all Japanese servants out of their grooves, were utterly helpless, and lay supine in their corners, covered, head and all, with futons. The altitude, the cold, or the dilemma paralyzed their usually nimble faculties, and our coolies were far more useful. We could not stand upright under the heavy beams of the roof, and as the floor planks had been taken up here and there to brace the doors with, walking was difficult in that dark abode. While we grew impatient in our cage, the four little naval cadets sat, or lay, quietly in their futons, hour after hour, talking as cheerfully as if the sun were shining, their prospects hopeful, and their summer suits of white duck designed for the Eighth Station's phenomenal climate. Throughout our incarceration the coolies dozed and waked under their futons, sitting up only long enough to eat, or play some childish game, and dropping back to reckon how much per diem would accrue to them without an equivalent of work. When we found that the smoky fireplace offered some warmth, we sat around the sunken box with our feet in the ashes and handkerchiefs to our eyes to keep out the blinding smoke.