Next day we went back again to Moji, where a polite and dapper little officer examined us and our passes and asked us many questions. Why he did I know not, since he seemed to know about us in advance, and every now and then he would look up from a pass and say: "Oh, you are so-and-so"--whereat "so-and-so" would look a bit uneasy. At two o'clock that day we set sail--correspondents, interpreters, servants, horses, a few soldiers, and much ammunition--on the transport Heijo Maru. Every ship has that "Maru" after its name, and I have never been able to find out just what it means--except that literally it is "round in shape." We steamed slowly past a long, bleak, hump-backed little island that had been the funeral pyre for the Japanese dead in the war with China. For ordinarily the Japanese, after taking a lock of hair, a finger-nail, or the _inkobo_ (a bone in the throat), which they send back to relatives, burn their dead. But this funeral pyre was for those who died in the hospital, and the wounded and sick therein could see by the flames at night where next day their own ashes might lie. Thence we turned northward toward the goal of five months' hope on the part of those hitherto unhappy but now most cheerful eighteen men. Fuji was on board. Fuji is my horse, and he had come down by rail. He is Japanese and a stallion--as most Japanese horses are. He has a bushy, wayward mane, by the strands of which you can box the compass with great accuracy, and a bushy forelock that is just as wayward. His head, physiognomy, and general traits will come in better when later they get an opportunity for display. All I knew then of Fuji was that he had nearly pulled the arms out of the sockets of several men, and had broken one man's leg back in Tokio. I was soon to learn that this was very little to know about Fuji. Takeuchi also was aboard. Takeuchi is my interpreter and servant. He is tall and slender, and has a narrow, intelligent face and general proportions that an American girl characterized as Greek. I call him the ever-faithful or the ever-faithless--just as his mood for the day happens to be. He keeps me guessing all the time. When I make up my mind that I am going to say harsh things next day, I find Takeuchi tucking a blanket around me at three o'clock in the morning. He knows they are coming, and when I do say them Takeuchi answers, "I beg you my pardon," in a way that leads me to doubt which of us is the real offender after all. Sometimes my watch and money disappear, but Takeuchi turns up with them the next morning, shaking his head and with one wave of his hand toward the table. "Not safe," he says, smiting his waistband, where both were concealed. "I keep him." He has both now all the time. His first account overran, to be sure, the exact amount of his salary for one month and for that amount I had him sign a receipt. Two hours later he said, in perplexity: "I do not understand the receipt I give you."