s lie all over the room in groups of four or five, each of whom
is provided with a little wooden head-rest and lies curled up like a tired
dog with his face towards the lamp in the centre of the group. In his hand
is the bamboo-stemmed pipe, the bowl of which reminds one of the cheap
china ink-bottles used in native offices, and close by lies the long thin
needle which from time to time he dips in the saucer of opium-juice and
holds in the flame until the juice frizzles into a tiny pellet fit for
insertion in the bowl of the pipe. The room is heavy with vapour that
clutches at the throat, for every cranny and interstice is covered with
fragments of old sacking defying the passage of the night air. As you turn
towards the door, a fat Mughal rises slowly from the ground and makes
obeisance, saying that he is the proprietor. "Your club seems to pay,
shet-ji! Is it always as well patronised as it is this evening?" "Aye,
always," comes the sleepy answer, "for my opium is good, the daily
subscription but small; and there be many whom trouble and sorrow have
taught the road to peace. They come hither daily about sundown and dream
till day-break, and again set forth upon their day's work. But they return,
they always return until Sonapur claims them. They are of all kinds, my
customers. There, mark you, is a Sikh embroiderer from Lahore; here is a
Mahomedan fitter from the railway work-shops; this one keeps a tea shop in
the Nall Bazaar, that one is a pedlar; and him you see smiling in his
sleep, he is a seaman just arrived from a long voyage."

You hazard the question whether any of the customers ever die in this
paradise of smoke-begotten dreams; and the answer comes: "Not often; for
they that smoke opium are immune from plague and other sudden diseases. But
the parrot which you see in the cage overhead was left to me by one who
died just where the saheb now stands. He was a merchant of some status and
used to travel to Singapore and South Africa before he came here. But once,
after a longer journey than usual, he returned to find that his only son
had died of the plague and that his wife had forgotten him for another.
Therefore he cast aside his business and came hither in quest of
forgetfulness. Here he daily smoked until his money was well-nigh spent,
and then one night he died quietly, leaving me the parrot." You peer up
through the fumes and discern one bright black eye fixed upon you half in
anger, half in inquiry. The bi