THE VASE OF THE MIKADO.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 10883, 6 February 1901, Page 2

THE VASE OF THE MIKADO.

Bγ A. Er.nist B. Laxk. Kryte Justican was a collector—a professional collector. He reaped his harvest from remote fields, sown with the flotsam and jetsam of bygone agss. Often he was sent on very particular missions by enthusiastic amateurs or_ richly endowed scientific societies, to oozy islands below the equator, sweating disease, to the great poppy fields of China, to the Fiji Islands. Orchitis, primitive opium pipes, aboriginal weapons and cannibalistic curios —thsso were his quest, and there was no dangerous or remote region into which he had not penetrated, no peril which he had not braved —and escapsd. But as yet he had not made the big "find" which is the dream of all collectors. To be the discoverer of something absolutely unique and inimitable means for the collector fame, fortune and a gratification like that of th« artist when he brings his work to perfection. Many times he had taken his life in his hands" searching for this elusive dream, which is tha more fascinating bs.cause it is formless. He knew th? grotesquerie of which Nature is capable, the fantasies which Oriental art makes real, and so his search nad all the charm of the inconceivable.

1 Thus far, 'however, he had but shared the common lot of collectors., though ho certainly deserved better things. Never had he so deeply regretted his non-success as one day when, lounging upon the veranda 0/ a Ceylon coffee planter's house, he reviewed the last months of his life. For it had come about that Kryte Justican had been himself "collected,'.and by a pair of the sweetest eyes in the world, and was now a labelled specimen in the anthropological collection of a girl in Calcutta. He would hava, given much to read the label, and everything to know that ha was the "unique specimen" for which Miss Linden's wistful eyes had been looking. However, there was* a monetary "but" in the matter, so Kryte Justican, who had very fastidious (and perhaps exaggerated) id-sas of honour, came away from Calcutta and said nothing. He had thought Miss Linden's expression Qdd when he said good-bye—had she been any other woman ho would have thought it tender —but in her case he dared not. Very soon, too soon, after meeting her, he had said something gallant, and perhaps Miss Linden thought it presumptuous upon such short acquaintance, for she had said, laughing: "Ah, Mr Jnstican. you must not make mc such speeches! There is 'Standing room only' in my affections. You are cot the man, I think, to stand and pray !" "No," he said, coolly «nou2h; "I have a sense of Ijhe fitness of things—at some shrines I should prefer to kneel." '"Some?" she said—but a faint colour belied her impertinence. "One," he answered directly. His eyes were masterful, but Miss Linden was not easily conquered. She smiled a little, half turned, paused, gave him a look, half shy, half mutinous, and wholly adorable, which completely finished him, and then resolutely joined herself persistently to Mrs Watson. As Justican thought of this for the hundredth time, he asked himself if she had meant to rebuke his presumption, warn him that she was no longer free (half the eligible of Calcutta were captives of her chariot), or —happier thought—had he really penetrated her defences and touched her hesxt, if ever so little?

Musing in this manner, he was rallied by his neglected friend, the planter, who recounted some of his own affairs of the heart.

"I meant tie real thing, you brute," said Kryte, laughing half vexedly, the colour stealing up under his brown skin. "Well, you have a plucky lot of cheek!" said the planter. "Have another ricky?" "No, thanKs."

''Come and see my latest importation of famine, then," said the coffee man rising, and the two went to the coolie quarters, where a new batch of emaciated, half-dead Japanese coolies were in the first stage of "building up" on rice water. The wily old Jap padrone who had accompanied them upon their "personally conducted" trip to Ceylon had sailed away as soon as he got them hustled on shore, and his count verified and acknowledged—not waiting for possible complaints as to the condition of the consignment.

"Fine looking lot of cattle!" said the planter. "I can count three weeks" rations dead loss."

"Yes," said Justican: "I'm looking -fit that old chap over there, -who's a regular beauty. He's exactly like a very fine onepiece "old ivory carving I've just sent to Christy's. Look at- his ribs! And Ills faco iiks'a corrugated mask, and tbe ■wrinkles about his cars! Why, man. he might have been the model for the statuette — that's what the habit of centuries does."

Justican seemed quite unaware of the inversion of his comparison. The planter grinced silently, and, when his guest went to talk to the old coolie, shrugged his shoulders and returned to his piazza and his gin rickies.

When the starved Oriental heard himself addressed in his own language and in a scholarly dialect, he prostrated himself and proceeded to make various exaggerated avowals of respect and humbleness to the collector, which after some days were justified by the. facts, for tho aged Japanese almost succumbed to the after effects of the starvation diet on ooard the ship, the master of which had contracted to supply so many coolies for the coffee plantation, and who, if he lost on the venture, had at least nothing to reproach himself with as to extravagance in the commissariat. Undoubtedly, the old coolie might have relinquished all hope of ever seeing the land of cherry blossoms again, had it not been that Jus'tican devoted himself to thorough nursing. Thus it came about that when the collector, receiving the niail for which he had been waiting, prepared to start afresh on his mission, the ancient Japanese sent for him and entrusted to him a secret that fairly dazzled Justican —and the imagination of the professional collector is not easily overcome.

Long, long ago, ages before tie Christ from whose birth we date our centuries, the Japanese were already skilled in all arts of fabrication. The" eowmon things of everyday life were to tin' i things of art. Life* itself was less complex, but its components were more beautiful. Gold and lacquer work, ivory, jade, and crystal were by these old Japanese wrought to the acme of perfection, but above and beyond all, their achievements with porcelain were supreme. In the cours9 of time much of their wondrous skill was lost, as the exigencies of foreign and civil war distracted their descendants from the arts of peace, but these ancients wrought with porcelain as though it had the properties of a dozen different material?—spun it as though it were silk, curved it like soapstone. imbued it with colours as though it were an absorbent bud from the cotton tre£ —colours so rich, so pure, so utterly unattainable to us that a tiny vase of Beach-blow sells for ten times more thousands than it is inches high— nor was the psach-blow their most precious ware. They did not think lightly of thsir own achievements, those ancient arificers — and records of notable objects of art were kept in the imperial archives, and from this regal treasury of secrets hints and inklings have filtered forth of marvels made and seemingly lost, long, long since. Then there is scarcely a district in Japan that has not its local tradition, preserved orally, of some hidden or vanished treasm-e. These Japanese traditions never concern themselves with gold in the concrete —it is always some great bronze or jade image or wonderful crystal ball that excites the avid imagination.

Of all these wonderful tales, the_ most wonderful and most widely known is the story of the Vases of the Mikado. The tale *of two great vases of the inimitable porcelain of their era, perfect and without flaw, made entirely of that peacock iris porcelain (of which we moderns have never sesn aught but some tiny broken fragments), and sunk in a certain spot in the sea, to become crusted with the pearly deposits, the coral orowtlis. the saline traceries of the dc:p. li the. Japanese worship their ancestors, they crrtainly do not neglect posterity, for when tlio vessels were sunk it wr.s intended that they should remain a hundred years—a glorified version of the custom of laying down a pipe of wine at an heir's birth, to bz broached at his majority.

But the Mikado who thus laid' up treasure for posterity was saon cut off, and his successors were involved in many wars. In process of time, by the mutations of ministries and the evolution of dynasties, the exact location of the Vases of the Mikado was lost, but the tradition .of their existence, while growing more attenuated as lime passed, remained, and Justiean, whose mind was stored with these things, had h?ard the story. He had seen fragments of common pottery, taken from Japanese waters, which had, indeed, experienced "a sea changj into senuthing rich and strange," and the secret which the old coolie had imparted to him was the definite knowledge that ons of the Vases of the Mikado was yet in eiist-encs, and when ho had to:d this iuucli. he drew from his loin-cloth a little pmket wrapped in ries paper, then in the water-proof cloth madn from thelab. , vizda. which, unfolding, displayed an old scrap of parchment, from which depended a silken cord, curiously knotted, ar;d upon which was inscribed the outline map of a portion of the sea coast of Japan. It was the map of ;i wide, curving bay. To the left was a red symbol, which Justiean recognised aa the cypher of that long dead Mikado who had bVsn so beneficent to the arts and crafts. A tiny dot marked what the coolie said was the (>xact location of the Vu.se-. The secret had been in his family for ages, a hereditary treasure, but, ironically enough, valueless to tham. For they were of tha poorest and never could have possessed themselves of it secretly, and to avow the knowledge of the secret would have b:en to sell it to the territorial lord at the.price of unimaginable tortures.

Bub in each generation of his family one was bred a diver, that lie might to see that the treasure of the family was safe. He himself with his own eyes had sesu it — standing a>. ths hdirht of a man and of wondrous beauty—but, at the bottom of the sea ! The other?" It lay in fragments embedded in tliß sand. The'knots en the silken cord counted the number of paces it was from the point marked by the imperial cypher to the locntion of the Vuss marked by the dot. When all this had been told, Justican asked the old coolie what rovard he wished. He declared that "a smile from His Most High Benevolence" was enough for him, for why should he ask for money, or what gladness was there in it, when he might not go home? Or why should he beg that li 3b2 sv.t. ire 2of his contract with the coffeo and be sent home, if he had not wherewith to buy food when he got there? The plain Occidental meaning of this Oriental inversion was that he wanted liberty to go back to Japan and money enough to keep him when he got thsre. This Justican promised specifically, whereupon the old coolie said :

"I perceive I have b:en talking to one who has the true wisdom."

When they separated, a lean form rose from behind a pile of shallow coffee creels*, near where they had had their talk, and, bstaking himself to one who was a professional scribe among the coolies, the listener got from him the materials for writing, and after laboriously inscribing certain Hues, came prostrating himself b?fore Justican as to a god, and besought him, saying that he had heard from the old coofio that the Most High was going to the very province whence the most humble and miserable worm now bafore him had come, and would the Xoble One condescend to take the letter (wliich of a truth the crawling one dare not hand to His Dragonship), forgetting the slave who had written it, but deigning to glance at the name of the August One to whom it was sent, and so on, and so on, until out of the magniloquence Justican gathered that ha wished a petition sped on its way to the great man of the neighbourhood where he was going, and feelins himself debtor to the whole creation of coolies he cheerfully consented.

So the collector of floating and sunken treasures departed, and it came to pass that in the coolie quarters of a certain coffee plantation in Ceylon two coolies, a young one and an old one, boasted that they would soon be going back to Japan with, their fortunes made. Now the younger one grew offensive at last, putting the tonj?us in the cheek at the old one, and d?clarinir that he would be rscalkd to a position of power at the s'ds of the ruler of the province, and when the wrinkled patriarch heard that he grew suspicious and wily, and presently wormed out of the vainglorious ycung man that he had sent a. letter by Justican. That was enough for the old coolie. He thereupon sought his master, and made a talk to him, fxplainin.; the certain defeat of Justican's plans if the young coolie's letter shouold be delivered, and bs-

seeching liim to let Justican know as swiftly as the devil that talks under the sea could eonvev it.

But the coffee planter was a deliberate man in all save matters of the heart, A cable message is to a letter what Liebig's is to beef, and the planter's brain balked at the effort of producing such a. concentration of intelligence. Besides, lie was not a collector, and mentally he confused the Vase of the Mikado with" the china ornaments on his mantelshelf. So he pacified his anxious serf with many promises—and •wrote Justican two mails later.

Justican sailed for Japan with the love of Miss Linden in 'his heart, and the fear of typhoons before his eyes, for it had coins about that with each* wave that slapped against the ship he found himself calculating the effect of winds and waves upon the precious object which he already mentally colled his. Musing always upon the lady and the Vase, their identities became interchangeable, nnd he strove, as it were, for each. For. given the right to woo, the suit seems half won. and Justican kn-aw that if lie got the Vase ho would have the right to speak to Miss Linden.

In due season he arrived in Japan, and immediately he took a coaster for the nearest considerable seaport to his destination. Now. one of the most essential Qualifications of a successful collector is that he be clever at '"covering his tracks," for though "Finding's keeping and keeping's having" in tlio collectors code of ethics, governments and territorial lords are prone to perverted notions of such matters. Justican was an adept at "covering his tracks." Indeed, paradoxical as it may sstm, ho sometimes covered them befora they were mad?, as h\ this instance, when tarrying in the little seaport to fit out the little ship he had chartered, he gave out that he was searching for old embroideries, in th? four-fold stitch, so famous, and ancient swords. .

Xow. the chief steward of the over-lord of th 5 province was in the seaport when Justican arrived, come at tba bidding of his master to conduct certain singing ladie3 to the territorial palace, and he conveyed ths intelligancs of Justiean's arrival and his quest, together with the letter from the young coolie in Ceylon, which Justican delivered over to him" sealed with a mild glow of benevolent well-doing. It was nob long before collector had his little ship, The Rice Bird, ready. Among his men were two exp?rt divers, engaged, however, in a general capacity, with no~ apparent regard to their peculiar avocation. * W'hsai justican told them to dive tluy would dive. Till then they took their places with ths rest of the crew in whatever was the occupation of tlia moment.

Justican kr.'ew a little of most practical things, and he had block ar.d tackle and all ready'to be rig sod when necessary to raise t-ho Vase. So bsihold ! One fine morning The Rice Bird cast anchor in that great bay •where ths Vase of the Mikado was waiting for the "heir of the ages" who was to possess

It was nccessarr to wait for the full moon, for Justican had" no idea of beginning his woik in the daylight, and no Japanese diver wll descend unless the moon be full. The collector had carefully scaled his map of the bay and knew the precise spot to begin. he concluded to raka the district for "finds" in the way of antiquities. The district was altogether out of the tourist rut. and Justican got some very good things, notably a three-headed dragon with ;i flexible, scaled body, made after the manner of a suit of armour. These treasuresli 3 had transferred immediately to The Rice Bird, wlijoh was held ready to'depart, at any iiour. The Vase of tibe Mikado would not be on board ten minutes when the ship woould spread her lateen wings and bo away. He had known many collectors who had loitered until * ! heiv purchase, becoming known to the over-lord, -he had stepped in. confiscated t'he treasure from the buyer and the price from the seller, and leit them both lamenting.

D:iy by d:iy t!i9 people enrna to the collector's hut o':i shore to dis.pjav their wares. Day by day Justican, chaffered and chafed, and night by night he watched the slowly rounding moon and thanked his stars that tlia o'.d coolie's map was so particularised for this bay. with its sandy reaches, its monotonous background of sombre-shafted, pines, its imperceptible gradations from inlet, to sea line, would have taken more than one . night's searching—more than a week's or a( month's —ere he could have located the Vase. As it was. he had The Pace Bird anchored ever the spot on the bay corresponding to tha Imperial cypher on the map. Ha had but to sail s* f*;r, put his man over ths sUte, pull up the Vase, get away—and then—the girl with gray eyes at Calcutta. The moon was near the full, when, one morning, a messenger enme to him. There was. it seemed, n certain nobleman in the neighbourhood who had ,fallen upon evil d?.vs, yet he would not' have it known abroad. He had a great store of armour, embroidsry, paintings on silk paper, and old ivories. Some o£ these hs might sell, did tho foreign nobleman care to come to see them. Part with them he mizht, but hawk them to Jiistican'3 hut he could not. Still, if the foreign nobleman cared to see them, he would be conducted safely by the trusty messenger, who, having spoken, stood in his scant, snow-white linen, his head humbly bowed, his straw sandals together at "attention," for he had spoken with Justican outside the hut, and so had not removed his j foot covering.

In three minutes Justican was following his guide batween ths brown trunks of thp pin? trees, upon the bark of which the process of growth had left marks like a carven ceometrical design. They went en and on, by a winding and ever narrowing way. ;>rr-s.s a little lajsrocn where irises grew and whe.re herons and scarlet ibis seemed to regard them as trespassers, and then the • cams to a typical Japanese garden, with artificial lakrkts. minia.tuie mountains, tiny pagodas, in the arches of which hung cunningly timed chimes of bells; fountains po-.iTfd {r-'tn t!i3 mouths of dragons, with rainbow iir-li swimming in their basins; trees, twMed ard stunted into mere living knots, ard, in the midst of this, an eiirhtsided pagnda of porcelain, into which Justican was ushered, finding there an elderly Japanese in gorgeous array, waiting to receive him.

Tiie room wns octagonal. Wowing the configuration of tho pagoda. There were evidently more storeys above, and this one was not lighted from the sides but from above, a flood of light coming down through pellucid glass. About this octagonal room were hung the most exquisite embroideries. Here and there were stands o." ancient armour, and grotesnue war in;<sk« grinned from the wall. Ivory tusk?, c:nv?d to represent the pilgrimage of liie wiiii nil its incidents, &tood on pedestals nt iade. and a glorious globe of flawless crystal causrht the descending light and flashed it forth again to eacli coiner of the room. Jus tican paid scant heed, it must be said, to the courtesies and formal greetings of the eldarlv Japanese—his educated eye wan appraising ihe treasures about him. Aimve all. a viry ancient ncoriman took his eye. This Japanese palanquin was of lacquer without, while within it was lined with hand-woven brocade of pale mauve wistarh biossoni3 and red-billed swallows. It had great bearing poles adorned with rings of silver, and the torch socket and corners were bound with the same metal, not riveted but hammered into place.

Justican bargained for it, and got it for a price that made him mentally give thanks. The elderly Japanese seemed pleased with his choice, too. but suddenly, giving signs of annoyance and exclaiming against the negligence of his people in not bringing refreshments, he left the pagoda, closing the doer.

The antiquarian was delighted with the opportunity <;i examining the hangings, but, after minutely scrutinising one, he found himself rather oppressed. It occurred to him that liis host was a long time away, and that the room was close. He looked for the doer, but an embroidered hanging concealed it, and he could not remember which of the eight walls held the panel. Hβ had a strange desire to breathe fresh air, and started toward where he thought the door must be. Midway he twayed and Mould have fallen, had he not caught at the nooriman. His eyes were smarting, and there was an acrid taste in his mouth: he felt <i strange numbness stealing over him;*

He asked himself the reason for this, and all at once he knew. He had been betrayed, he was being suffocated by one of thosa vaporous poisons of which the Japanese and the Burmese alone know the secret. He was in an air-tight chamber. If they left him long enough he would die like a mouse under an exhaust tube—he remembered' once seeing such an experiment.

But why was this? Then his dulling and wavering thoughts centred upon the map. That was it! Yet, "how had they known'? He heard the murmur of man,y voices—l there was in his head the sound as of a hundred grinding millstones which, as they turned, seemed to striae off sparks that darted before his eyes and dazzled them. This was the end, then—and a whimsical thought shaped itself: '"Exit, amid {ireworks !" In that flash of intelligence whiof, for the fraction of a second, intei-ver.es hV tween delusion and lethargy, he saw-the doar open and a dozen brown faces poet in: He thought, defiantly, "They shall not have the Vase of the Mikado!" Then he fell, his last thrill of consciousness being a strange and incoherent sense of triumph, which abode with him till he awoke.

He awoke with a sea breeze blowing away the fumes of poison, awoke smothered by pale mauve wis. teria blossoms, through whoso racemes flitted red-billed swallows. After a dizzy moment or two he realised that he was in the ancient nooriman, that his brown-faced body-servant peered between the curtains, that the salt-water smell of the wide ssa was in his nostrils.

Hβ stretched out his hand—his arm wag stift and the joints worked grudgingly— and the servant helped to drag him out of the nooriman, though at one time he seemed like to burst it open and ruin it with his broad shoulders. He staggered cs lig tried to ■ stand upright, and would have fallen but for the servant, but us his smarting eyes looked again upju the world, a very Berserker >\ige possessed him, for 'Die Rice Bird wus out at sen,'the sun was sinking, and the bay in which they had been anchored wus far. far behind!

Then it was that the ship captain,, trembling before the rage and the curses that Justican poured forth, ciime and explained saying that his Honour had been borne u-board by the seivants of the Lord of the Provinca in the nooriman. That the servants had given also their Lord's orders that The Rice Bird take wing at once, nor ever show herself in these waters again. That the Lord of the Province knew nothing of the- Foreign Lord, save that in having a cup of s:\ki with him he had fallen into a strange stupor, and out of the goodness of his heart the Lord of the Province had sent his bearers with him to the ship, "Whereupon," , said the captain, "the beaters departed, and we also, having no voice to guide us save the voico of the great Lord, came away, foe, let his Honour mark, we knew not whether ho were alive or dead and gone to his thrice illustrious ancestors, but—this very virtuously—we- said one to another, 'We will not so much as profane the person of the Most High Lord by the touch of our unworthy fingers, nay, if he be dead and stink and breed a pestilence among us, yet will we hold our hands that they may see we have not done harm to the' Most Illustrious "

But Justican, raving, drove them from him, and wrestled with tho devil of Ms disappointment alone in his ransacked cabin. For there was no hope now, the map was gone—it were useless to attempt to get this crew to turn back. Besides, long ere this, doubtless, the Vane of the Mikado was safe in the possession of the Lord of the Province. But how—how had ho guessed the stranger's object, when for years the map had been hidden unsuspected in the poorest house in his province? The answer to this puzzle Justican discovered when he got back to port and found the coffee planter's letter at the consulate. Justican was hard hit. There were crow's feet about his blue eyes and a bitter set of the lip under his tow moustache as he packed up his swords and embroideries, th-e three-headed dragon and the ancient noorhnan, and sent them off to Christy's, The thought which,-of all others, most tormented him was that he himself had home the young coolie's missive of betrayal, and put it into the mail pouch of the Lord o\ the Province.

It was three years later- Kryte Justican was en route to Scotland 'to classify a collection of pottery bequeathed {o a museum. Pottery made him muse on the one great opportunity of his life which Futc had caused him to miss. When-he left Japan after that fiasco, he took with him two definito resolves—one to reward the old coolie according to his attentions, not according to their outcome—the other to go once more to Calcutta, spend a few days in worship and then say jiood-bve to Miss Linden, a programme which he proceeded to carr'v cut, save in one not unimportant par-

, ~ ... He went to Ceylon. saw the old coo.ie safe on board a ship bound for Japan with a sum which seemed" to him riches, and caw tho facs oh" the young ccohe as he, watched the receding shir, a sicken in? Ir.nlc ; of 'iiopa deferred" which checked tin natural" dssira to dn him both);.- harm. It m yiio d°"ree raised his estimation of the Japanese Lord, who evidently had no intention o- trewarding th« poor wretch whr, had written to nut a priceless treasure within Ins reacn. Them remained the farewell to M;ss Linden Justicnn went to Calcutta and spent a , number of blissful <lavs. his heart in his eye* as he watched the object of his adoration. A certain timorouvness had replaced her ga? defiance. But he, like many worse men. had "principles," and ha was determined to live down 'his own heart ard liva up. to thsm, and fo nno day he went to say gocdbvn to Miss Linden. H> found her en a piazza overrun nno shaded b7 a trepinal creeper v;ith roseate, lily-like flowers. They talked, and the ?oilector told of his projected voyage to Patagonia, and Miss Linden listened and smilert —though after that a deeper note seemffl . to sound in her voice—and then he rose to say farewell. . "Good-bye." he said, and his.eyes added eloquently "those things which he woulu not StlV. '■'Good-bye," she replied, and laid' her • hand in his. They looks d af each othsr. In his face : . was unspeakable yearning. On hers—cou.d it be?—reproach. Then, slowly, but unmistakably, her eyes filled with tears. It needed but that. In y half a second shs was in his arms;, and they were vowed to each other. Two years and six months later they were no neai-er marriage than before. Justican was here, there, and everywhere. She was in Calcutta or Simla, much run after, but

loyal. . 'Justican thought of these things, and almost groaned, as 112 again remembered that fatal slip 'twixt the cup and his lip. Nest day. as he strolled through the .Scottish musaum where his expsrt knowledge was to Ba employed, he suddenly halted in_ the Japanese "Room, fer there, reposing in--* cons-picuous place, was a silver-mounted, lacQuered nooriman. with lining and curtains damasked with wisteria blossoms ana red-billed swallows A card conveyed tw information that it ITad been presented to the museum by the Duke of Strathxoss.

As Justican stood musing by the nocriman in wliii-h he had taken that ignominious ridJ, there revived in him the memories of that; ill-starred day. Once more the deadly sickness aTid physical numbne&s chained himt tPi the spot: once mere a lethargy beclouded , his reason; again he h-eard the murmur of voices; again, by a supreme effort, he resolved to "baulk his enemies in their search for the map. Mechanically, like an automaton controlled by some external bat superior power, he put forth hi« hand, -slid it into the silver-bound torch socket, and

The antiquarian emerged from his trance, trembling like a leaf in a storm, for there in his fingers was something at which lie dared not look for very joy, while subconscious memory, spanning the years and the <ju~ of oblivion, whispered to him how, by ». final struggle of tU3 entrapped intelligence, ha had had Twit enough to conceal the invaluable map in the torch socket of ihe noonman—and there it was! The unaccountable sense of triumph which he had felt for a second was explained—intellect had been numbly rejoicing at its success. Kryte Justican went back.to Jupan, and,., independent of Japanese boats or boatmen, found and brought away the Vase of til* Mikado. But all the world of art knows otthat, knows of the enormous price paid for it, and of how it stands in the grand saiou of one of the White Tsar's great palaces, guarded night and day. The world, however, does not know of Justican's first venture for it, oi how he became possessed of the secret, ncr of what his success meant to a certain faithful woman in India.