CHAPTER XLVIII

UNUSUAL HOSPITALITY

September 16th.

Yves has let fall his silver whistle in the ocean, the whistle so
absolutely indispensable for the manoeuvres; and we search the town all
day long, followed by Chrysantheme and Mesdemoiselles La Neige and La
Lune, her sisters, in the endeavor to find another.

It is, however, very difficult to find such a thing in Nagasaki; above
all, very difficult to explain in Japanese what is a sailor's whistle of
the traditional shape, curved, and with a little ball at the end to
modulate the trills and the various sounds of official orders. For three
hours we are sent from shop to shop; at each one they pretend to
understand perfectly what is wanted and trace on tissue-paper, with a
paint-brush, the addresses of the shops where we shall without fail meet
with what we require. Away we go, full of hope, only to encounter some
fresh mystification, till our breathless djins get quite bewildered.

They understand admirably that we want a thing that will make a noise,
music, in short; thereupon they offer us instruments of every, and of the
most unexpected, shape--squeakers for Punch-and-Judy voices, dog-
whistles, trumpets. Each time it is something more and more absurd, so
that at last we are overcome with uncontrollable fits of laughter. Last
of all, an aged Japanese optician, who assumes a most knowing air, a look
of sublime wisdom, goes off to forage in his back shop, and brings to
light a steam fog-horn, a relict from some wrecked steamer.