Toranaga learns to dive

Blackthorne wakes in the pilot's bunk; the galley lies off Totomi, and Mariko, her arm out of its sling, tells him in Latin that he has great bravery. On deck everyone is naked and swimming. He strips uneasily, dives cleanly and swims to a desolate beach. Toranaga wants to learn the dive and belly-flops six times, refusing to wait ("today I will learn how to dive"), until Blackthorne teaches a stiff dead-man's fall. At sunset, with Yabu and Fujiko attending, Blackthorne tells of England's sea power and hears of the Mongol invasions and the kamikaze. He proposes a navy built in England and trained in ten years, and asks for Jesuit grammars; Toranaga promises only an answer in good time. Pigeons fly at dawn: Kiri and Hiro-matsu to leave or burn and die. Off Cape Ito a cliff avalanches into the sea, Blackthorne's first earthquake. "In this Land of Tears, death is our heritage."

A breathing chapter after Osaka. The swimming lesson reverses the teacher and pupil, and Toranaga's refusal to wait for tomorrow is his character in one line. The talk of navies and Mongols is the strategic thesis stated plainly. The cliff falling into the sea introduces earthquake as the book's other sovereign.