Chap. XVI. 
OPIUM-SMOKERS. 
261 
This had the effect of restoring something like quiet- 
ness to the house. I now ordered Sing-Hoo into my room 
and shut the door. The business, however, had gone too 
far, for the other men were highly incensed at his con- 
duct, and threatened to be revenged upon him. For 
hours after this I could hear them talking about the 
matter, even after they had lain down in their beds. 
Sing-Hoo listened eagerly to every word of their conver- 
sation, and was evidently in a state of great alarm. He 
begged me to allow a candle to be lighted and kept 
burning in our apartment during the night. 
In the room next to mine, and only separated from it 
by a wooden partition, about a dozen opium-smokers 
had taken up their quarters. The soft, sickening fumes 
of the drug found their way through the chinks of the 
partition, and were most disagreeable. In a short time 
the opium began to operate upon the smokers : they 
talked and laughed loudly, and were evidently in their 
" heaven of bliss.'' Sing-Hoo's affair was uppermost in 
their minds, and it seemed as if they could think or talk 
of nothing else. What madmen might do under the 
circumstances — for madmen they were while under the 
influence of the drug — I could not possibly foresee. This 
kept me awake for several hours. At last, however, I 
dropped off to sleep, and did not awake until daylight 
was streaming into our miserable ap&rtment. All was 
perfectly quiet. Sing-Hoo was lying on his bed fast 
asleep with his clothes on, and the opium-smokers had 
gone off at last into the land of dreams. 
Rousing Sing-Hoo, I desired him to go and look after 
another chair and coolies to take me onwards across the 
