Kahei was greatly delighted at this mark of confidence, though he declined to go on shore till the next day, as it would not conform to Japanese ideas of etiquette for him to land on the same day with his sailors. He confessed to Rikord that he had been greatly wounded by the threat to carry him to Okhotsk. It was not consistent with Japanese ideas, that a man of his position should remain a prisoner in a foreign country, and he had therefore made up his mind to prevent it by cutting himself open. He had accordingly cut off the tuft of hair from his head,—and he showed that it was gone,—and had laid it in the box with his picture; it being customary with those about to die honorably, by their own hands, in a distant place, to send this token to their friends, who bury the tuft of hair with all the ceremonies which they would have bestowed upon the body. And he even intimated that previous to doing this execution on himself, he might first have stabbed Rikord and the next in command. Kahei exerted himself with the greatest energy in the matter of the negotiation, and he soon was able to produce a letter, in the hand-writing of Golownin, and signed by him and Moor, but which the jealousy of their keepers had limited to the simple announcement that they were alive and well at Matsumae. Afterwards one of the imprisoned Russian sailors was brought on board the ship, being sent from Matsumae for that purpose; but, though allowed to spend his days on board the “Diana,” he was required to return to the fort every night. In spite, however, of all the watchfulness of the Japanese, he had brought sewed up in his jacket a letter from Golownin, in which he recommended prudence, civility, candor, and especially patience, and entreated that no letters nor anything else should be sent him which might cause him to be tormented with questions and translations. The Japanese would not deliver up their prisoners till the “Diana” first sailed to Okhotsk, and brought from the authorities there a formal written disavowal of the hostilities of Chwostoff. At Okhotsk was found the letter from the governor of Irkutsk, previously sent for at Kahei’s suggestion, and with this document and another letter from the commander at Okhotsk, the “Diana” reached Hakodate towards the end of October. “As we approached the town,” says Rikord, “we observed that cloth was hung out only at a few places on the hill, or near it, and not over the whole buildings, as at Kunashiri. With the assistance of our telescopes, we observed six of these screens of cloth, probably intended to conceal fortifications. There were, beside, five new fortifications at short distances from each other, and from two to three hundred fathoms from the shore.