ving these chattering, shouting sons of the
Celestial Kingdom would have guessed that anything out of the ordinary
was on foot. They kept on eating, and did not even look up when several
Japs stole, one by one, through their midst and disappeared through a
door at the back. The Japs apparently attracted no attention whatsoever,
but a keen observer would have noticed that Hung Wapu placed a little
saki-bowl on a low table for every Japanese visitor that had entered his
shop.

The Japs all went through a side-door of the opium-den into a large
room, where they took off their outer clothing and put on uniforms
instead. Then they lay down to sleep either on the mats on the floor or
on the bundles of clothing which were stacked on the floor along the
walls of the room.

Hung Wapu now accompanied one of his Chinese guests up the cellar-steps
to the street, and sitting down on the top step began to chat in a low
voice with his apparently half-intoxicated countryman. At the same time
he polished about two dozen little saki-bowls with an old rag,
afterwards arranging them in long rows on the pavement.

The animated traffic in the narrow alley gradually died down. One by one
most of the gas-lamps closed their tired eyes, and only the green
paper-lantern above Hung Wapu's door continued to swing to and fro in
the night-wind, while similar spots of colored light were visible in
front of a few of the neighboring houses. Far away a clock struck the
hour of midnight, and somewhere else, high up in the air, a bell rang
out twelve strokes with a metallic sound. A cool current of air coming
from the harbor swept through the hot, ill-smelling alley.

Hung Wapu went on whispering with his companion, and all the time he
continued to polish his little saki-bowls. After a while the visitor
fell asleep against the door-post and snored with all his might. Misty
shadows began to fall slowly and the lights of the street lamps took on
a red glow. Suddenly the figure of a drunken man appeared a little
distance away; he was carefully feeling his way along the houses, but as
soon as he came in sight of Hung Wapu's cellar, he suddenly seemed to
sober up for a minute and made directly for it. "Saki!" he stammered,
planting himself in front of Hung Wapu, whereupon the latter made a
sign. The drunken man, a Japanese, whose face looked ghastly pale in the
green light from the lantern, stared stupidly at the saki-bowls, which
Hung Wapu was trying to sh