"Hail me a 'sampan,' brother, please."

Yves then, by a motion of his arm through the wind and rain, summoned a
kind of little, white, wooden sarcophagus which was skipping near us on
the waves, sculled by two yellow boys stark naked in the rain. The craft
approached us, I jumped into it, then through a little trap-door shaped
like a rat-trap that one of the scullers threw open for me, I slipped in
and stretched myself at full length on a mat in what is called the
"cabin" of a sampan.

There was just room enough for my body to lie in this floating coffin,
which was scrupulously clean, white with the whiteness of new deal
boards. I was well sheltered from the rain, that fell pattering on my
lid, and thus I started for the town, lying in this box, flat on my
stomach, rocked by one wave, roughly shaken by another, at moments almost
overturned; and through the half-opened door of my rat-trap I saw, upside-
down, the two little creatures to whom I had entrusted my fate, children
of eight or ten years of age at the most, who, with little monkeyish
faces, had, however, fully developed muscles, like miniature men, and
were already as skilful as regular old salts.

Suddenly they began to shout; no doubt we were approaching the landing-
place. And indeed, through my trap-door, which I had now thrown wide
open, I saw quite near to me the gray flagstones on the quays. I got out
of my sarcophagus and prepared to set foot on Japanese soil for the first
time in my life.

All was streaming around us, and the tiresome rain dashed into my eyes.