The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima

so amazed him—where were they now?
    Here at home, looking just the same as they had before he had gone away, there were still the same old cupboard, wall clock, Buddhist altar, dining-table, dressing-table—and the same old mother. There were the cookstove and the dirty straw mats. These things could understand him even without words. And yet all of them, including even his mother, were at him to tell them about his travels.
    Hiroshi finally calmed down about the time Shinji came home from the day’s fishing. After supper he opened his travel diary and gave his mother and brother a perfunctory account of his trip. Satisfied, they ceased questioning him about the excursion.
    Everything was back to normal. His became again an existence in which everything was understood without theneed for words. The cupboard, the wall clock, his mother, his brother, the old sooty cookstove, the sea’s roaring … folded in these familiar arms, Hiroshi slept soundly.
    Hiroshi’s summer vacation was nearing its end. So every day from the moment he got up until he went to bed he was playing with all his might.
    The island abounded in places to play. Hiroshi and his friends had finally seen the Western movies that until that time they had only heard about, and the new game of cowboys and Indians had now become a great favorite with them. The sight of smoke rising from a forest fire around Motoura, on Shima Peninsula across the sea, inevitably reminded them of signal fires rising from some Indian stronghold.
    The cormorants of Uta-jima were birds of passage, and by this time of year they were vanishing one by one. All over the island the songs of nightingales were now frequently heard. The steep pass leading down to the middle school was known as Red Nose Pass because of its effect on the noses of passers-by in the winter, when it received every blast that blew, but now, no matter how cool the day, the breezes there would not even so much as turn a nose pink.
    Beuten Promontory, at the southern tip of the island, provided the boys with their Western locale. The western side of the promontory was entirely of limestone, and it led finally to the entrance of a cave, one of the most mysterious spots on Uta-jima.
    The entrance to the cave was small, only about a yard and a half wide and two feet high, but the winding passageway leading into the interior gradually widened outinto a three-tiered cavern. Until that point the passageway was truly black, but a strange half-light wavered within the cavern proper. This was because the cave actually went completely through the promontory to an invisible opening on the eastern side, where the sea entered, rising and falling at the bottom of a deep shaft in the rock.
    Candles in hand, the gang entered the cave. Calling “Watch out!” and “Be careful!” to each other, they went crawling through the dark passageway. They could see each other’s faces floating on the darkness, tinted with grimness in the flickering candlelight, and they thought how wonderful they would look in this light if only they had the unshaven beards of young toughs.
    The gang was made up of Hiroshi, Sochan, and Katchan. They were on their way to search for Indian treasure deep in the farthest recesses of the cavern. Sochan was in the lead, and when they came out into the cavern, where they could at last stand erect, his head was splendidly covered with thickly woven cobwebs.
    “Hey! look at you!” Hiroshi and Katchan chorused. “Your hair’s all decorated. You can be the chieftain.”
    They stood their three candles up beneath a Sanskrit inscription some unknown person had carved long ago on one of the moss-covered walls.
    The sea, ebbing and flowing in the shaft at the eastern end of the cave, roared fiercely as it dashed against the rocks. The sound of the surging waves was completely different from that to which they were accustomed outside. It was a seething sound that echoed off the limestone walls of the cavern, the