We had been burrowing under the auditorium, and presently found
ourselves in a large cellar where a Chinese was cooking on a brazier an
unspeakable melange of dog, fish, and rat for the actors' supper, with
not a scrap of ventilation anywhere!! Finally, up some steps, we
emerged behind the scenes, and saw all the performers dressing--rows of
false beards and wonderful garments hanging all around the walls; the
most indescribable smell of opium, warm eastern humanity, and grease
paint, and no _air_! A tiny baby was there being played with by its
proud father. Their lung capacity must be quite different to ours,
because if we had not quickly returned I am sure some of us would have
fainted. I felt strangely excited; it had a weird, fierce effect. What
a fatal mysterious nation the Chinese! Unlike any others on earth. I
did not much care who held me going back. I only wanted to rush to the
open air, and when we had climbed up again and got outside in the
street, we all staggered a little and could not speak.
When breath returned, further down the street, we recommenced burrowing
into a passage to the opium den, and this was a most wonderful and
terrible sight; a room with a stove in it, not more than ten feet
square and about eight feet high, no perceptible ventilation but the
door, which the detective put his foot in to keep a little open; a
raised platform along one side of the place, and on it four Chinamen
lying in different stages of the effects of opium.
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