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TWO BABY BOYS. 65
who alone could bind down and hold still this co-
lossal subterranean cat-fish. Only by the stone which
is the rock-rivet of the whole earth, could the big
fish be held down and kept quiet.
In a very few minutes they reached the village of
Sabanami. Here the people, usually careless and
unconcerned, were out in the streets chatting and
excited.
Ordinary earthquakes in Japan are as frequent as
the hours, severe ones as numerous as the moons, the
dreadful ones as common as equinoxes. All animal
life seemed now rejoiced that the shock was over.
Chickens were cackling and the cocks were crowing
with joy. Dogs were frisking and the cats looked
happy. Small boys with sticks were chasing and
cornering the rats, so populous in every roof and
thatch, and usually the first living things to leap out,
so that in a violent earthquake a Japanese house
might remind a Western traveler of a Gothic cathedral
with the unclean spirits leaping forth. The
laziness of the cats allowed this increase of rodent
population, which in time of danger furnishes the
decoration of living- gargoyles to the shaking houses.
In front of the druggist's shop, with its sign of a
white medicine-bag suspended, a crowd had gathered
round the door. Some one had been hurt. Uhe'i,
by inquiry, learned that the mail-carrier, when at
a full run, just at the entrance of the village, with
one leg in the air, had been knocked off his balance
and falling against the masonry of the bo-bana, or
entrance, had been found insensible. The village