Yabu climbs down the cliff

Yabu leads the shore party along a cliff path in the gale. They find Rodrigues wedged in a cleft above the surf, sixty sheer feet below. Blackthorne, realising the samurai are guarding rather than restraining him, baits Yabu: go down yourself, then. Yabu, who means to make the Anjin his vassal, strips to his loincloth and climbs, falls the last twenty feet and finds Rodrigues alive. The rising tide cuts off the shore; Yabu settles on his rock to compose his death poem. Blackthorne tears kimonos and sashes into a rope, spots a foot-wide ledge, and a samurai hurls himself off the cliff ("Bansaiiiiiii!") to break Yabu's trance. Yabu drags the Portuguese to the ledge and holds his head above the sea for an hour until Takatashi returns with ropes. A doctor sets the leg; Blackthorne bows and thanks the man he hates.

A cliff, a tide and a death poem. Clavell uses the rescue to give Yabu his one act of physical courage and to let Blackthorne see it, which complicates the hatred for the rest of the book. The samurai who leaps to break Yabu's trance is the first pure demonstration of duty as spectacle.