At any rate they made it through, and putting the mountains of Japan on their larboard quarter they ventured into the East China Sea. Immediately the lookout identified sails to larboard: a ship emerging through a spacious gap between certain outlying Japanese islands, and coming about into a course roughly parallel with their own. This was curious, because the charts showed nothing but Japanese land in the direction from which the ship had come—beyond that, it was the Pacific Ocean for one hundred degrees, and then vague sketches of a supposed American coastline. And yet this ship was unmistakably European. More to the point, as van Hoek announced after peering at it for a while through his spyglass, it was Dutch. And that settled the mystery. This was one of those Dutch vessels that was allowed to sail into the harbor of Nagasaki and anchor before Deshima—a walled and guarded island-compound near that city, where a handful of Europeans were suffered to dwell for brief periods as they traded with the representatives of the Shogun.