Prevod

There once lived a peasant in Hata District in the province of Tosa who farmed rice fields in another province rather than his own. He raised his seedlings near his home, and when the time came to plant them out, he loaded them into a boat, along with food for the people he would hire to do the planting and all the household implements he would need, from pots and kettles to spades, hoes, and plows. He left his two children, a boy and a girl of about eleven or twelve, aboard to watch the boat, while he and his wife went ashore briefly to hire the planters. Thinking they would be gone only a moment, they had merely pulled the boat a little way up the shore and left it untied. The children fell asleep in the bottom of the boat. When the tide rose, the boat floated free, and a light breeze carried it out a little; then the ebbing tide drew it far out through the harbor. Offshore the wind blew harder still, and the boat sped along as though under sail. When the children awoke and looked about, they found themselves out at sea with nowhere to turn for help. They wept in terror, but there was nothing they could do, and they drifted on, not knowing where they were going. Meanwhile, their parents gathered the hired workers and returned to board the boat, only to find it gone. For a while they looked about, wondering whether someone had moved it into shelter from the wind. They shouted and raised an outcry, but who was there to answer? They searched inlet after inlet, yet found no trace of it, and at last could do nothing but give up. The boat, meanwhile, was blown ashore on an island far out at sea. Still weeping, the children climbed out and tied it up, but when they looked around, there was no one anywhere. With no idea how to return home, they went ashore and said to one another, “There is nothing we can do now. But that does not mean we should throw our lives away. As long as this food lasts, we can keep ourselves alive by eating a little at a time. Once it is gone, though, how shall we live? Come, let us plant these seedlings before they wither.” Agreeing that this was best, they found a place beside a stream that could be made into a rice field. Since they had spades and hoes, they also cut wood and built themselves a hut. Many trees were bearing fruit in season, and they gathered and ate it, passing their days and nights in this way until autumn came. Perhaps it was meant to be: the field they had planted yielded remarkably well, far better than the fields back home, and they harvested and stored a great quantity of rice. Yet they could not go on as they were forever, and in time they became husband and wife. They had many sons and daughters, who in turn became husbands and wives to one another. It was a large island, and they brought more and more land under cultivation, until, so it is said, the descendants of that brother and sister have now all but filled it. Someone told me that it is called Imose Island and lies out at sea to the south of the province of Tosa.