but when intoxicated, and with the weather threatening, he openly
poured upon them abuse, reviling, and suspicion. He usually started a
pipe of opium about noon, and the change in his demeanour came round
gradually during the afternoon. In the morning he was sober and pious,
in the evening intoxicated and blasphemous, particularly, as I have
said, when the weather was bad. "As for that infernal Chin-Tee," he
would say in effect, shaking his fist in the direction of the idol,
"it's all her fault we're in this mess. What's the use of her--lazy
harridan! Much she cares what becomes of us"--and so on till
overpowered by excess. When by the next morning he had slept off his
debauch, and came round to recollection of his enormities, his
penitence knew no bounds; he would prostrate himself in the
Joss-house, and in the most abject terms implore forgiveness for his
intemperate language over-night. Then he would generally abstain for
two or three days, but at the first sign of bad weather, he took to
his pipe, and Chin-Tee came in for another blast of abuse. The rest of
the crew were always horrified by the shocking impiety of the Ty Kong,
and on more than one occasion I really feared that they were about to
proceed to Jonahize him. They were by no means all opium-smokers; some
of them smoked tobacco, of a vile quality, in metal pipes, with an
under-hanging curved portion containing water, through which the
smoke passed. The opium-pipe is a quite different thing. It is a reed
of about an inch in diameter, and the aperture in the bowl for the
admission of the opium is not larger than a pin's head. The drug is
prepared by boiling and evaporation to the consistence of treacle.
Very few whiffs can be taken from a single pipe, but one is enough to
have an effect on a beginner, as I have already described in my own
case, but an old hand, like the Ty Kong, can smoke for hours.

The incense burned before the idols consisted mostly of pieces of