But there was one odd fellow on the Tsukuda boat. He was an eccentric middle-aged man named Mori Gonnoshin, an officer of foot with an allowance of seventy bales of rice and rations for five men. Strangely this man alone did not catch lice. Therefore, of course, he was covered with them all over. While some mounted to the knot on his queued hair, others crossed over on the edge of the plate at the back of his divided skirt. Yet he paid no special attention to them.
Then if you think that this man alone was not bitten by the lice, still you are mistaken. Just like the rest, he was covered with so many red blotches all over his body that he might well be described as spotted with coins. Moreover, from the way he scratched them, it did not look as if they were itchless. But no matter whether they itched or what they did, he affected utter indifference.
If it had all been affectation, it would not have been so strange, but when he saw the others diligently gathering lice, he called to them,
“If you catch ’em, don’t kill ’em. Put ’em in teacups alive, an’ I’ll take ’em.”
“When you get ’em, what’ll you do with ’em?” asked one of his fellows, with a look of surprise.
“When I get ’em? Then I’ll go so far as to raise ’em,” Mori calmly replied.
“Then we’ll take ’em alive and give ’em to you.”
The officer, because he thought it a joke, worked half a day with two or three others and collected several cupfuls of living lice. He thought in his