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The circumstance, with the reasons which seemed to make such a step necessary and desirable, was recorded at length in the Matsuma Maru official log, signed by the skipper and countersigned, at his request, by Nakamura and myself, as accessories, so to speak.
Once clear of the harbour, the skipper rang for full speed; and the Matsuma Maru, a white-hulled, steel-built ship of some four thousand tons, rigged as a topsail schooner, soon showed that she was the possessor of a nimble pair of heels. She was loaded well down, yet an hour after the patent log had been put overboard it recorded a run of seventeen knots.
"You are Mr Paul Swinburne, bound for Japan?" he said, putting the statement in the form of a question, and speaking in perfect English. "I am," I replied. "And you?" "I am Captain Murata Nakamura, of the Japanese army, in England on Government business, and now returning to Japan in the Matsuma Maru, the steamer in which I understand you are going out.
For an instant he watched the bubbles which marked the course of the missile, and then shouted an order to our helmsman; the Matsuma Maru swerved from her course, and the torpedo sped harmlessly past us, a hundred yards to port.
"Hello, Matsuma, you young monkey," said the old man, as the bad boy burst the door open and rushed in with a shovel at shoulder arms, and came to "present arms" in front of the old man, who came from behind the barrel and acknowledged the salute. "Say, now honest did you put that chunk of ice in the stove the day you skipped out last?"
We reached Marseilles without adventure at eight o'clock on the following morning, and, after breakfasting at the railway station, chartered a cab and drove down to the Joliet, where we found our ship, the Matsuma Maru, lying alongside a wharf piled yards high with crates, bales, and cases of all sorts and sizes waiting to be stowed in the ship's holds.
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