can do the Black Smoke for any length of time straight on); a Chinaman
that was Fung-Tching's nephew; a bazar-woman that had got a lot of
money somehow; an English loafer--Mac-Somebody I think, but I have
forgotten--that smoked heaps, but never seemed to pay anything (they
said he had saved Fung-Tching's life at some trial in Calcutta when
he was a barrister): another Eurasian, like myself, from Madras; a
half-caste woman, and a couple of men who said they had come from the
North. I think they must have been Persians or Afghans or something.
There are not more than five of us living now, but we come regular. I
don't know what happened to the Baboos; but the bazar-woman she died
after six months of the Gate, and I think Fung-Tching took her bangles
and nose-ring for himself. But I'm not certain. The Englishman, he drank
as well as smoked, and he dropped off. One of the Persians got killed in
a row at night by the big well near the mosque a long time ago, and the
Police shut up the well, because they said it was full of foul air. They
found him dead at the bottom of it. So, you see, there is only me, the
Chinaman, the half-caste woman that we call the Memsahib (she used to
live with Fung-Tching), the other Eurasian, and one of the Persians. The
Memsahib looks very old now. I think she was a young woman when the
Gate was opened; but we are all old for the matter of that. Hundreds
and hundreds of years old. It is very hard to keep count of time in the
Gate, and besides, time doesn't matter to me. I draw my sixty rupees
fresh and fresh every month. A very, very long while ago, when I used
to be getting three hundred and fifty rupees a month, and pickings, on
a big timber-contract at Calcutta, I had a wife of sorts. But she's dead
now. People said that I killed her by taking to the Black Smoke. Perhaps
I did, but it's so long since it doesn't matter. Sometimes when I first
came to the Gate, I used to feel sorry for it; but that's all over and
done with long ago, and I draw my sixty rupees fresh and fresh every
month, and am quite happy. Not DRUNK happy, you know, but always quiet
and soothed and contented.

How did I take to it? It began at Calcutta. I used to try it in my own
house, just to see what it was like. I never went very far, but I think
my wife must have died then. Anyhow, I found myself here, and got to
know Fung-Tching. I don't remember rightly how that came about; but he
told me of the Gate and I used to go the