By and by, and just as the clock was striking eight, the men came sauntering up the street smoking their bamboo pipes and chatting and joking with each other. They seemed to be perfectly unconscious that they were fully two hours late, and they tossed the chairs on the ground with an air as though they were in advance of their time and were anxious to be on the road. They seemed to be mightily taken aback when we asked them, with a good deal of indignation in our tones, why they had not kept to the agreement of coming to us at daylight. "But we have come at daylight," they replied, with amazement in their looks; "what is it now but daylight?" We speedily showed them from the current use of the word daylight, that that event happened more than two hours ago, and that by this time we ought to have been at least five miles on our journey. They all seemed really surprised that the present moment could not be fairly called daylight, but with the readiness of the Chinese in repartee one of them said, "We really had to rise before daylight to be here now, for we had to cook our rice and have breakfast, for the work before us is no light one, and we dare not undertake it on an empty stomach. Then we had to smoke our usual quantity of opium. Until we had done that we dare not attempt the long journey that we have before us to-day. You blame us for being late, but just think of what we have had to do before we could come here. We had to cook our own breakfast and eat it, and that took up some time. Then we had to get our opium pipes in working order, and slowly manipulate the opium, and that you know is not like tobacco that you can take a few whiffs of and the thing is finished. We had then to lie on the opium-bench for some time till the drowsiness passed away and we had recovered our senses. How could we come earlier with all these things to do? You decided that we should come at daylight, and here we are. Did you expect us to come without having had our breakfast? You are no slight weight to carry, you know, and if we had done so, we should have had to drop you on the road before we had been an hour on our journey."