I02 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



float with its bobbing heads. To his amazement his eyes fell upon 

 them only a few yards distant from the assembled boats, and he 

 let out a most unusual roar and pointed for all men to see. 



Every man stopped what he was doing to look, and there they saw 

 liye paddling slowly towards them, one hand on the float, the 

 other clutched around her brother's neck. And when willing hands 

 had fished them from the waters and had laid out Daikyo, whose 

 body was ringed by a livid welt of bleeding flesh and exposed ribs, 

 and had done what they could for him, the men turned to the girl. 

 The end of the Hne attached to the float showed plainly how she 

 had saved her brother. It was cleanly cut, which could only have 

 been done with a sharp knife. liye still had that knife clutched be- 

 tween her teeth when they pulled her from the sea. 



The men were very silent and they went about their business indus- 

 triously, fastening the lines to the floating whale. Then they rowed 

 for seven hours back to the bay, and nobody said a word. liye 

 rowed also, while little Naze tended to her brother. It was dark 

 when they reached the village beach and almost dawn by the time 

 they had drawn the three whales killed to the foreshore. Then the 

 men from all the boats which had been near that of Daikyo assem- 

 bled, with Jindo San at their head and, forming a body apart from 

 all the rest, they called to liye to come from her house. They bowed 

 to her, something not normally done by grown men to an unmar- 

 ried and young girl, and they asked her forgiveness in formal and 

 most humble terms. Then, without waiting for any reply, they went 

 quietly away to their houses. Only Masatoshi remained, and every- 

 body recognized that it was his duty to do so. He approached liye 

 in silence, took her by the hand, and led her to the house of her aging 

 father. 



The inhabitants of the islands of Nippon are a mixed race in the 

 narrower sense of that term. Originally there was a most ancient 

 Stone Age stock inhabiting these islands which were then invaded 

 by another people emanating from the nearby continent who sub- 

 dued and then partly exterminated and partly absorbed them. Next 

 came a second wave of more cultured folk who overran the south- 

 ern part of the archipelago, wiping out all whom they found there 



