We used to call the gully,
"the Gully of the Black Smoke," but its native name is altogether different of
course. A loaded donkey couldn't pass between the walls; and, at one point,
just before you reach the Gate, a bulged house-front makes people go along all
sideways.
It isn't really a gate though. It's a house. Old Fung-Tching had it first five
years ago. He was a boot-maker in Calcutta. They say that he murdered his wife
there when he was drunk. That was why he dropped bazar-rum and took to the
Black Smoke instead. Later on, he came up north and opened the Gate as a house
where you could get your smoke in peace and quiet. Mind you, it was a pukka,
respectable opium-house, and not one of those stifling, sweltering chandoo-
khanas, that you can find all over the City. No; the old man knew his business
thoroughly, and he was most clean for a Chinaman. He was a one-eyed little
chap, not much more than five feet high, and both his middle fingers were gone.
All the same, he was the handiest man at rolling black pills I have ever seen.
Never seemed to be touched by the Smoke, either; and what he took day and
night, night and day, was a caution. I've been at it five years, and I can do
my fair share of the Smoke with any one; but I was a child to Fung-Tching that
way.
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