It was so ridiculous and petty, Alf thought. Such a disturbance about
nothing! And, decidedly, he must be doing something. Thoughts of diving
wildly through that forest of legs, and of striking out at whomsoever
opposed him, flashed through his mind; but, as though divining his
purpose, one of the waiters, a short and chunky chap with an
evil-looking cast in one eye, seized him by the arm.

"You pay now! You pay now! Twenty-five sen!" yelled the proprietor,
hoarse with rage.

Alf was red in the face, too, from mortification; but he resolutely set
out on another exploration. He had given up the purse, pinning his last
hope on stray coins. In the little change-pocket of his coat he found
a ten-sen piece and five-copper sen; and remembering having recently
missed a ten-sen piece, he cut the seam of the pocket and resurrected
the coin from the depths of the lining. Twenty-five sen he held in his
hand, the sum required to pay for the supper he had eaten. He turned
them over to the proprietor, who counted them, grew suddenly calm, and
bowed obsequiously--in fact, the whole crowd bowed obsequiously and
melted away.

Alf Davis was a young sailor, just turned sixteen, on board the _Annie
Mine_, an American sailing-schooner, which had run into Yokohama to
ship its season's catch of skins to London. And in this, his second trip
ashore, he was beginning to snatch his first puzzling glimpses of the
Oriental mind. He laughed when the bowing and kotowing was over, and
turned on his heel to confront another problem. How was he to get aboard
ship? It was eleven o'clock at night, and there would be no ship's boats
ashore, while the outlook for hiring a native boatman, with nothing but
empty pockets to draw upon, was not particularly inviting.