Before leaving the board at the end of a session, the players would check the number of moves and the time consumed. The Master was not quick to understand.
On July 16 Otaké sealed the last play, Black 43, at half past four. Informed that there had been a total of sixteen plays in the course of the day, the Master found the statement hard to accept.
“Sixteen? Can we have made that many?”
The girl explained again that from White 28 through the sealed play there had been a total of sixteen. Otaké concurred. The game was still in its early stages and there were only forty-two stones on the board. A glance should had sufficed to confirm the girl’s statement, but the Master had his doubts. He counted up stone by stone on his fingers, and still did not seem convinced.
“Let’s line them up and see.”
Taking away the stones played that day, he and Otaké replaced them in alternation: one, two, three, and so to sixteen.
“Sixteen?” muttered the Master vacantly. “Quite a day’s work.”
“That’s because you’re so fast, sir,” said Otaké.
“Oh, but I’m not, though.”
The Master sat absently by the board and showed no inclination to leave. The others could not leave before him.
“Suppose we go on over,” said Onoda after a time. “You’ll feel better.”
“Shall we have a game of chess?” said the Master, looking up as if he had just been awakened. There was nothing feigned about this air of abstraction.
A mere sixteen plays scarcely demanded a recount, and a player has the whole of the board constantly in his head, when he is eating and even when he is sleeping. Perhaps it was a sign of dedication and a concern for precision that the Master all the same insisted on replaying each of the stones, and would not be satisfied until he had done so. Perhaps too it had in it a certain element of circumspection. One saw in the curious mannerism the loneliness of an old man who has not had too happy a life.
At the fifth session five days later, July 21, there were twenty-two plays, from White 44 to the sealed Black 65.
“How much time did I use?” the Master asked the girl.
“An hour and twenty minutes.”
“That much?” He seemed incredulous. The total time he had used for his eleven plays was six minutes fewer than Otaké had used for Black 59 alone. Yet he seemed to think he had played more rapidly.
“It does seem unlikely that you used so much time, sir,” said Otaké. “You were playing at a fearful rate.”
“How much for the cap?”15 the Master asked the girl.
“The dead-end?”16
“Twenty minutes.”
“The link took you longer,” said Otaké.
“White 58 that would be?” The girl looked at her records. “Thirty-five minutes.”
The Master still did not seem convinced. He took the chart from the girl and examined it intently.
I like a good bath, and it was summer; and always when a session ended I went immediately to the bath house. Today Otaké was almost as quick as I was.
“You made good progress.”
“The Master is fast and he makes no mistakes, and that gives him a double advantage,” laughed Otaké. “The game is as good as over.”
I could still feel the strength that seemed to flow from him when he was at the board. It was something of an embarrassment to meet a Go player just before or after a session.
This restless energy suggested great resolve. Branded on his mind, perhaps, was a plan for a violent attack.
Onoda of the Sixth Rank too was astonished at the Master’s speed.
“Eleven hours would be more than enough for him even in a grand tournament. But it’s a difficult spot. That cap isn’t the kind of play you make in a hurry.”
Through the fourth session, on July 16, White had used four hours and thirty-eight minutes, and Black six hours and fifty-two minutes. At the end of the fifth session, on July 21, the difference was even greater: five hours and fifty-seven minutes for White, ten hours and twenty-eight minutes for Black.
At the end of the sixth session, on July 31,17 White had used eight hours and thirty-two minutes, Black twelve hours and forty-three minutes; and at the end of the seventh on August 5, White had used ten hours and thirty-one minutes, Black fifteen hours and forty-five minutes.
But by the tenth session, on August 14, the distance had narrowed: White had used fourteen hours and fifty-eight minutes as against Black’s seventeen hours and forty-seven minutes. It was on that day, after sealing White 100, that the Master went into St. Luke’s Hospital. Struggling bravely on despite his illness, he had used two hours and seven minutes for a single play, White 90, on August 5.
When finally the match ended on December 4, there was an uncomfortable difference of some fourteen or fifteen hours between the two. Shūsai the Master had used nineteen hours and fifty-seven minutes, and Otaké of the Seventh Rank had used thirty-four hours and nineteen minutes.