“What do they taste like?”
“Let’s see. Like oily parched rice, I guess,” said he.
Those who use their mouths to crush lice are to be found everywhere, but this man was not of their number. As light refreshment pure and simple, he ate them every day. He was the first to oppose Mori.
There was not another soul who took after Inoue and ate lice, but a considerable number joined him in his opposition. According to them, men’s bodies certainly could not be warmed by the presence of lice. Moreover, in the Book of Filial Piety, it is written that we receive our bodies, hair and hide, from our fathers and mothers, and the very beginning of filial duty lies in not injuring them. Of one’s own choice to feed these bodies to such things as lice was egregiously unfilial. Whence lice should by all means be hunted out. They should not be raised.
Under these circumstances, disputes arose from time to time between the Mori and Inoue groups. And so long as they simply ended in argument, there was no harm. But in the end things developed unexpectedly from such beginnings even unto the starting of an appeal to the sword.
It came about in this way. One day Mori received from the others a lot of lice which he put into a teacup and set aside, intending to raise them carefully as usual, when Inoue, taking advantage of his incaution, ate them up before he noticed. When Mori came to look for them, there was not one left. Then this precursor flared into anger.
“What’d you eat ’em for?” he demanded, edging up to Inoue with his arms akimbo and his eyes blazing.
“Fact is, it’s idiotic to keep lice,” said Inoue indifferently, showing absolutely no desire to take him up.
“It’s idiotic to eat ’em.”
Mori flew into a fury and, pounding the plank deck shouted,
“Look here! Is there anybody in this ship who isn’t indebted to lice? Takin’ these lice an’ eatin’ ’em is just like payin’ kindness with hate!”
“I haven’t the least recollection of ever receivin’ any favor from lice.”
“Nay, even if you haven’t, to wantonly take the lives of livin’ things is unspeakable.”
After two or three more remarks had been exchanged with increasing vehemence, Mori suddenly saw red and put his hand on the hilt of his maroon-sheathed sword. Of course Inoue did not back down. He quickly snatched up his long blade in its cinnabar scabbard and sprang to his feet. Had not the naked men who were going about catching lice excitedly forced the two apart, it would probably have meant the life of one or the other of them.
According to the story of one who saw this flurry with his own eyes, the two men, held fast in the arms of the whole party, still foamed at the mouth and shouted, “Lice--Lice--”
IV
And while the samurai in the ships thus came almost to bloodshed over the lice, the 500-_koku_ Kompira vessels, as if alone indifferent utterly to all this, ran on farther and farther west with their red and white banners flapping in the cold wind under the snowy sky on the long, long road leading to the chastisement of Chōshū.
THE SPIDER’S THREAD
I
One day the Buddha was sauntering alone on the brink of the lotus pond of Paradise.
The lotus flowers in bloom in the pond were all as white as pearls, and the golden pistils and stamens in their centers ceaselessly filled all the air with ineffable fragrance.
It was morning in Paradise.
Presently the Buddha stood still on the brink of the pond, and through an opening among the leaves which covered the face of the water, suddenly beheld the scene below.
As the floor of Hell lay directly beneath the lotus pond of Paradise, the Sanzu-no-Kawa and Hari-no-Yama were distinctly visible through the crystal water, as through a sterioptiscope.
Then his eye fell on a man named Kandata, who was squirming with the other sinners in the bottom of Hell.
This Kandata was a great robber who had done many evil things, murdering and setting fire to houses, but he had to his credit one good action. Once while on his way through a deep forest, he had noticed a little spider creeping along beside the road.
So quickly lifting his foot, he was about to trample it to death, when he suddenly thought, “No, no, as small as this thing is, it, too, has a soul: it would be rather a shame to recklessly kill it,” and spared the spider’s life.
As he looked down into Hell, the Buddha remembered how this Kandata had spared the spider’s life. And in return for that good deed, he thought, if possible, he would like to deliver him out of Hell. Fortunately when he looked around, he saw a spider of Paradise spinning a beautiful silvery thread on the halcyon-colored lotus leaves.
The Buddha quietly took up the spider’s thread in his hand. And he let it straight down to the bottom of Hell far below through the opening among the pearly white lotus flowers.
II
Here Kandata was rising and sinking with the other sinners in the Pond of Blood on the floor of Hell.
It was pitch black everywhere, and when sometimes a glimpse was caught of something rising from that darkness, it turned out to be the gleam of the needle of the dread Hari-no-Yama, so it was inexpressibly forbidding. Moreover the stillness of the grave reigned everywhere, and the only thing that could at times be heard was the faint sighing of the sinners.
This was because such sinners as had come down to this spot had already been tired out by the other manifold tortures of Hell and had lost even the strength to cry aloud.
So, great robber though he was, Kandata, also suffocated with the blood, could do nothing but struggle in the pond like a dying frog.
But his time came. One day when Kandata lifted his head by chance and looked up at the sky above the Pond of Blood, he saw a silver spider’s thread slipping down toward him from the high, high heavens, glittering slightly in the silent darkness just as if it feared the eyes of man.
When he saw this, his hands clapped themselves for joy. If, clinging to this thread, he climbed as far as it went, he could surely escape from Hell.
Nay, if all went well, he might even enter Paradise. Then he would never be driven on to Hari-no-Yama nor sunk in the Pond of Blood.
As soon as these thoughts came into his mind, he grasped the thread tightly in his two hands and began to climb up and up with all his might.
Because he was a great robber, he had long been thoroughly familiar with such things.
But Hell is nobody-knows-how-many myriads of miles removed from Paradise and, strive as he might, he could not easily get out. After climbing for a while, he was finally exhausted and could not ascend an inch higher.
So since he could do nothing else, he stopped to rest and, hanging to the thread, looked far, far down below him. Now since he had climbed with all his might, the Pond of Blood where he had just been was already, much to his surprise, hidden deep down in the darkness. And the dread Hari-no-Yama glittered dimly under him. If he went up at this rate, he might get out of Hell more easily than he had thought.
With his hand twisted into the spider’s thread, Kandata laughed and cried out in a voice such as he had not uttered during all the years since coming here, “Success! Success!”
But suddenly he noticed that below on the thread countless sinners were climbing eagerly after him, up and up, just like a procession of ants.
When he saw this, Kandata simply blinked his eyes for a moment, with his big mouth hanging foolishly open in surprise and terror.
How could that slender spider’s thread, which seemed as if it must break even with him alone, ever support the weight of all those people?
If it should break in midair, even he himself, after all his effort in reaching this spot, would have to fall headlong back into Hell. It would be terrible if such a thing happened.
But meanwhile hundreds and thousands of sinners were squirming out of the dark Pond of Blood and climbing with all their might in a line up the slender glittering thread. If he did not do something quickly, the thread was sure to break in two and fall. So Kandata cried out in a loud voice,
“Here, you sinners! This spider’s thread is mine. Who on earth gave you permission to come up it? Get down! Get down!”
Just at that moment, the spider’s thread, which had shown no sign of breaking up to that time, suddenly broke with a snap at the point where Kandata was hanging.
So he was helpless. Without time to utter a cry, he shot down and fell headlong into the darkness, spinning swiftly round and round like a top.
Afterwards, only the spider’s thread of Paradise, glittering and slender, hung short in the moonless and starless sky.
III
Standing on the brink of the Lotus Pond of Paradise, the Buddha watched closely all that happened, and when Kandata sank like a stone to the bottom of the Pond of Blood, he began to saunter again with a sad expression on his face.
Doubtless Kandata’s cold heart that would have saved only himself from Hell and his having received proper punishment and fallen back into Hell, had appeared to the Buddha’s eyes most pitiful. But the lotuses in the lotus pond of Paradise cared nothing at all about such things.