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village.  Your crew are confined to their house and are not allowed to leave it.  Do you understand?"
    "Yes.  Where are my crew?"
    Father Sebastio pointed vaguely at a cluster of houses near a wharf, obviously distressed by Omi's decision and impatience.  "There!  Enjoy your freedom, pirate.  Your evil's caught up with—"
    " Wakarimasu ka? " Omi said directly to Blackthorne.
    "He says, 'Do you understand?' "
    "What's 'yes' in Japanese?"
    Father Sebastio said to the samurai, " Wakarimasu. "
    Omi disdainfully waved them away.  They all bowed low.  Except one man who rose deliberately, without bowing.
    With blinding speed the killing sword made a hissing silver arc and the man's head toppled off his shoulders and a fountain of blood sprayed the earth.  The body rippled a few times and was still.  Involuntarily, the priest had backed off a pace.  No one else in the street had moved a muscle.  Their heads remained low and motionless.  Blackthorne was rigid, in shock.
    Omi put his foot carelessly on the corpse.
    " Ikinasai! " he said, motioning them away.
    The men in front of him bowed again, to the earth.  Then they got up and went away impassively.  The street began to empty.  And the shops.
    Father Sebastio looked down at the body.  Gravely he made the sign of the cross over him and said, " In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. "  He stared back at the samurai without fear now.
    " Ikinasai! "  The tip of the gleaming sword rested on the body.
    After a long moment the priest turned and walked away.  With dignity.  Omi watched him narrowly, then glanced at Blackthorne.  Blackthorne backed away and then, when safely distant, he quickly turned a corner and vanished.
    Omi began to laugh uproariously.  The street was empty now.  When his laughter was exhausted, he grasped his sword with both hands and began to hack the body methodically into small pieces.

    Blackthorne was in a small boat, the boatman sculling happily toward Erasmus .  He had had no trouble in getting the boat and he could see men on the main deck.  All were samurai.  Some had steel breastplates but most wore simple kimonos, as the robes were called, and the two swords.  All wore their hair the same way:  the top of the head shaved and the hair at the back and sides gathered into a queue, oiled, then doubled over the crown and tied neatly.  Only samurai were allowed this style and, for them, it was obligatory.  Only samurai could wear the two swords—always the long, two-handed killing sword and the short, daggerlike one—and, for them, the swords were obligatory.
    The samurai lined the gunwales of his ship watching him.
    Filled with disquiet, he climbed up the gangway and came on deck.  One samurai, more elaborately dressed than the others, came over to him and bowed.  Blackthorne had learned well and he bowed back equally and everyone on the deck beamed genially.  He still felt the horror of the sudden killing in the street, and their smiles did not allay his foreboding.  He went toward the companionway and stopped abruptly.  Across the doorway was pasted a wide band of red silk and, beside it, a small sign with queer, squiggled writing.  He hesitated, checked the other door, but that too was sealed up with a similar band, and a similar sign was nailed to the bulkhead.
    He reached out to remove the silk.
    " Hotté oké! "  To make the point quite clear the samurai on guard shook his head.  He was no longer smiling.
    "But this is my ship and I want . . ."  Blackthorne bottled his anxiety, eyes on the swords.  I've got to get below, he thought.  I've got to get the rutters, mine and the secret one.  Christ Jesus, if they're found and given to the priests or to the Japaners we're finished.  Any court in the world-outside of England and the Netherlands-would convict us as pirates with that evidence.  My rutter gives dates, places, and amounts of plunder taken, the number of dead at our three landings in the Americas