In return, Shaftoe taught Goto Dengo how not to throw like a girl. A lot of the Nips are good at baseball and so it was hilarious, even to them, to see their burly friend pushing ineffectually at a baseball. But it was Shaftoe who taught Goto Dengo to stand sideways, to rotate his shoulders, and to follow through. He’s paid a lot of attention to the big Nip’s throwing form during the last year, and maybe that’s why the image of Goto Dengo planting his feet on the ashlars of the Bund, winding up, throwing the streamer-wrapped grenade, and following through almost daintily on one combat-booted foot stays in Shaftoe’s mind all the way to Manila and beyond.