The North Pacific

"O-Hana-San – "

"Yes, Oshima, I am here!"

"The time?"

"It is morning – five o'clock."

The sick man was silent for a few moments. Then his eye fell upon a streak of gold which fell upon the wall.

"Ah!" he said softly, "the rising sun!"

Again he was silent. When he spoke once more he turned his head toward the girl and looked into her eyes.

"And – you must go – you must leave me, Hana?"

"Yes," she answered sorrowfully. "I am ordered. The naval hospital at Sasebo is crowded with new patients from the great sea battle. There are not nurses enough. I am ordered to go to-day."

"If you find Oto – tell him – Oshima sends his love by O-Hana-San. Tell him Oshima – is – ordered home! Banzai dai Nippon!"

His eyes closed. O-Hana-San bent over him, then hurried for the surgeon on duty.

"He will not waken," said that official. "He was a brave man."

Two days later a grey-haired man passed slowly out of the door of the villa that had been the home of Oshima's boyhood, in the little town by the sea. He paused beside a red slab which was posted before the house, and on which was written, in Japanese characters, "Gone to the Front." Then he stooped painfully and placed beside the first post another, like many in that village, and before other homes, all over Japan. It was black, and bore the simple inscription, "Bravery Forever."

"Oto, Oto Owari! It is I! See, it is O-Hana-San! I have come to help you – to make you well!"

Oto opened his eyes and turned his bandaged head on the pillow. His little playmate of years gone by was kneeling beside his cot, her great brown eyes moist and pleading – pleading with him not to die, not to join Oshima in the strange unknown shadows to which he had gone. She was quite satisfied that her hero should be deprived of the inscription "Bravery Forever" – for the present at least!

It was a hard fight for life, but the good surgeon of the ward, and the girl's unceasing care, and Oto's own fine constitution and determination to live for her, won the victory. While many died on every side, and the mournful stretchers came and went, and the black posts increased in number throughout the empire, the young commander steadily grew better, until he was discharged "well"; to take his place once more, with higher rank, on the quarter-deck of a fine new cruiser. On the day when he left the hospital he married O-Hana-San. On that same day, the fifth of September, 1905, the Treaty of Peace between Russia and Japan was signed by the envoys of the two countries at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Two weeks after the great battle of the Sea of Japan a war-ship, with hull white as snow, was ploughing the waters of the Pacific with her prow pointed due east. Land was still in sight astern, and over her taffrail floated the beautiful Stars and Stripes. The Osprey was homeward bound.

THE END

1

"Met you."

2

Mrs. Rexdale has insisted that some portions of her letter, interesting only to her husband, shall be omitted.

3

Readers of Cleared for Action will remember the previous career of the renegade Stevens. He was a graduate of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and subsequently turned against his country. In an attempt to betray the Spaniards he was detected, arrested, and thrown into prison at Santiago just before the fall of that city.

4

Since this paragraph was written a despatch in the daily press of the United States has announced that a short time ago a syndicate of American capitalists was formed to buy up the "cash" used by the natives of China, and sell it for the pure copper used in the coins. In this way enormous profits have been made, it is said, by the promoters of the scheme, and the larger cities of the Empire have been almost stripped of small change.

5

The Captain Oshima who figures in these pages must not be mistaken for Lieutenant-General Oshima, whose gallant services during the siege of Port Arthur have already been chronicled in the daily newspapers of America.