Recall, young lady, that my son had been dismissed from his master after the Christians were killed in the south. They had learned of his family. Of my occupation. And though for a time after Ieasu's rise, it appeared that upward mobility had a champion, there is always with us the desire to see things in their proper place.
Instead of returning home as he had been instructed, my son took his pay and set about looking for a ship that could take him further south, to the shores of the dragon he had seen in his dream. But none were willing to sell to him, not even the Dutch.
And so he used his pay instead to hire a crew of vicious men, and with them he commandeered a vessel out of port, and made haste to evade the wrath of the Daimyo. But he could not outrun the Daimyo's ships, and after a month of chase, my son was forced to engage them on open seas.
His foremost fear was that his crew were too vicious and selfish to remain loyal to him. That if they were offered reprieve, they would not hesitate to kill him themselves, and offer his head to the Daimyo's retainers.
On the evening before the morning, when he knew he must give the order to come about, my son locked himself in his cabin and contemplated dismemberment. The virtues, he had heard from a wandering monk in the marketplace, of removing one's own femur and then, before the blood-loss had taken the mind, carving an image of the Buddha from the bone, and offering rice and tea and incense. And after this, he allowed himself to dream, but not to sleep, as would have been improper.
At dawn, which the Dutch have told us is rosy in Greece--but to my son appeared only bright and silent as blood--he ordered the ship to come about. He handed his bow to the first mate, an Englishman, and ordered himself placed under arrest, to be handed over peacefully to their pursuers in exchange for leniency at sentencing...
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