"Yes," answered Geoffrey, "my wife is a bit overtired; she has turned in." "So you are making the most of your opportunity, studying night-life, eh, naughty boy?" "Not much about, is there?" said Geoffrey, who considered that a "pi fellow" was Bad Form, and would not be regarded as such even by a creature whose point of view was as contemptible as that of Wigram. "Doesn't walk the streets, old man; but it's there all the same. The men at the club here tell me that Nagasaki is one of the hottest spots on the face of the globe." "Seems sleepy enough," answered Geoffrey. "Oh, here! these are just English warehouses and consulates. They're always asleep. But you come with me and see them dance the _Chonkina_." Geoffrey started at this echo of his own thoughts, but he said,-- "I must be getting back; my wife will be anxious." "Not yet, not yet. It will be all over in half an hour, and it's worth seeing. I am just going to the club to find a fellow who said he'd show me the ropes." Geoffrey allowed himself to be persuaded. After all he was not expected home so immediately. It was many years since he had visited low and disreputable places. They were Bad Form, and had no appeal for him. But the strangeness of the place attracted him, and a longing for the first glimpse behind the scenes in this inexplicable new country. _Chonkina! Chonkina!_ Why shouldn't he go? He was introduced to Wigram's friend, Mr. Patterson, a Scotch merchant of Nagasaki, who lurched out of the club in his habitual Saturday evening state of mellow inebriation. They called for three rickshaws, whose runners seemed to know without instructions whither they had to go. "Is it far from here?" asked Geoffrey. "It is not so far," said the Scotchman; "it is most conveniently situated." Noiselessly they sped down narrow twisting streets with the same unfamiliar lights and shadows, the glowing paper walls, and the luminous globes of the gate lamps. From the distance came the beat of a drum. Geoffrey had heard a drum sounded like that before in the Somali village at Aden, a savage primitive sound with a kind of marching rhythm, suggestive of the swing of hundreds of black bodies moving to some obscene festival. But here, in Japan, such music sounded remote from the civilisation of the country, from the old as from the new. "_Chonkina, Chonkina_," it seemed to be beating. The rickshaws turned into a broader street with houses taller and more commanding than any seen hitherto. They were built of brown wood like big Swiss chalets, and were hung with red paper lanterns like huge ripe cherries. Another stage-like entrance, more fluttering of women and low prostrations, a procession along shining corridors and up steep stairways like companion-ladders, everywhere a heavy smell of cheap scent and powder, the reek of the brothel.