He had been standing behind us, balancing himself on the steep gable roof, for some while, but the current and the laws of gravitation had been absorbing all our attention, and like a true Japanese he was much too polite to interrupt. “There is nothing, nothing,” said he, “to eat.” For the rare missionary, or the rarer tourist, who patronises the coasting steamer of the Inland Sea comes provided as for an Arctic expedition. “But we shall eat Japanese food,” we explained. He bowed, a low, polite bow, but I do not think he believed us. Then he went away, and returned bearing foreign cups with saucers, full of a hot brown liquor called, he told us triumphantly, “coffee.” It was of the kind bought ready mixed in cakes, and made with hot water. We were pleased to know it _was_ coffee, and the attention touched us, still, Japanese tea would have tasted better. We thought the pinky-brown soup flavoured with orange peel, the fried fish with chestnut preserve, the custard stuffed with shrimps, and the bowls of rice eaten with salted plums and spiced roots off which we dined infinitely preferable; and the steward who fanned us with one hand, and served us with the other, saw that there was “something for us to eat.” It was eight o’clock when we climbed the steep ladder which led to our Moorish roof, eight o’clock on a July evening, and already the tall, deep-dented mountains of Kyushu lay dark and indistinct. They lay cut sharp against a twilight sky as though they had no thickness. And slowly the coast-line fell away grey into the sea. Kyushu was dying as the ship and sun moved on, Shikoku was but a blur upon the ocean, and between them the open sea made a pathway to the sky, all silver-grey and trembling, a road of light to that sunken light beyond. The sun had set, and the fleeting twilight of the East was night already. Japan’s green hills were turning grey. Night held sky and islands fast, but the pathway shone and trembled until it died in the last long streaks of light on the edge of the horizon. Night was come. * * * * * From Kobé to Shimonoseki stretch the two hundred and forty miles of the Inland Sea; and in it are gathered together most of the islands of Japan. Continuous as a mainland the coast of the big island runs down, while on the other side Kyushu and Shikoku with ancient Awaji, the firstborn of the Gods, dip their high green mountains in the sea; between, in lines and clusters, lie thousands upon thousands of baby islands; some large enough to hold a village, others too small for a single house; some green with trees and rice-fields, others a mere speck of rock reaching up out of the water. From morning until night we sat under the striped awning of our roof top, and watched as they glided past, green islands on the blue water; and always on our left hand the tall, deep-dented mountains of the mainland ran on and on.