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 shield from the tottering wretch with his arm.
"Twenty-eight bowls," he stammered to himself, "twenty-eight
saki-bowls----"
At this moment the sleeping Chinaman awoke and looked at the drunken man
with a silly laugh.
"Yes, twenty-eight saki-bowls; it's all right--twenty-eight saki-bowls,"
repeated the drunken Jap, and reeled on along the houses.
Hung Wapu seemed to have ended his day's work with the polishing of the
twenty-eight saki-bowls; he piled them up in a heap and disappeared with
them into his cellar, followed with extraordinary agility by the Chinese
sleeper. He hurried through the chop-house, the occupants of which were
all fast asleep on their straw mats, passed through the opium-den, and
then, in the third room, divested himself of his Chinese coat. The
silk-cap with the pigtail attached was flung into a corner, and then,
dressed in a khaki uniform, he seated himself at a table and studied a
map of the city of San Francisco, making notes in a small book by the
light of a smoky oil lamp.
The drunken Jap, who had apparently had doubts about entering Hung
Wapu's chop-house, tottered on down the quiet street and made for
another paper-lantern, which hung above another cellar door about ten
houses farther on.
Here too, curiously enough, he found the Chinese landlord sitting on the
top step. He wanted to push him aside and stumble down the steps, but
the Chinaman stopped him.
"How much?" stuttered the drunken man.
"How much?" answered the Chinaman. "How much money will the great
stranger pay for a meal for his illustrious stomach in Si Wafang's
miserable hut? Forty kasch, forty kasch the noble son of the Rising Sun
must pay for a shabby meal in Si Wafang's wretched hut."
"Forty kasch? I'll bring the forty kasch, most noble Si Wafang. 'I won't
go home till morning, till daylight does appear,'" bawled the tipsy man,
and staggered on down the street, whereupon this landlord also
disappeared in his cellar, after extinguishing the paper lantern over
the doorway.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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