In great misery our beasts skated along the banks making very slow progress, and I was in despair of reaching Hiōgo before dark, when at last, after several hours, I came upon the high road at a place where the left bank of a broad river was occupied by some eight hundred or a thousand soldiers, waiting to be ferried across. I did not know to what clan, or even to what party, they belonged, and I confess that my heart was in my mouth. However, as my men came up in single file, I passed down the word to them to take no notice whatever might happen, but if they should be in any way insulted or molested to come to me. I went up at once to the commander of the troops and addressed him with the utmost ceremony, telling him who we were, and expressing the warmest friendship. To my great relief he was quite polite and most amiable, making many excuses for the delay which the ferrying over of his men would cause us; I, on the other hand, apologizing to him for disturbing his men. We were soon on the best of terms, and as soon as his soldiers were all on the other side he sent back the ferry-boat for us. After crossing the river we overtook him and his men again at Amagasaki; they were marching in a great open space near the castle. My friend the commander gave a word of command: “Halt! Front! Present arms!” My men carried their lances and so we rode through the town in great state, and without any further adventures good or bad reached Hiōgo a little after dark. It had been a bitter ride, with rather more than a spice of emotion, and I doubt whether a more shivering lot of men and horses, starved with cold and hunger, faced the mangers that night in any part of the habitable globe. Happily the two men who slipped into the rice-field were none the worse for their dirty ducking. The Ministers were lodged in the old Custom House, Satow in an outbuilding, I in a shanty that might best be described as a Hiōgesque version of a fifth-rate Margate lodging house. At any rate we had roofs over our heads, we had fresh food, and our good friend, Herr von Brandt, had unearthed a bottle of Curaçoa, over which the diplomatic body made merry. He had already triumphed over the hungry colleagues in Ōsaka by the acquisition of a pig; but that led to difficulties, as the priests of the temple in which he was lodged stoutly objected to the slaying of the unclean beast—not on account of its uncleanness, but on account of its being a beast and therefore under the protection of Buddhistic law. The difficulties were overcome by a compromise whereby the place of execution was fixed in a vegetable garden adjoining a remote corner of the temple grounds.