The animated traffic in the narrow alley gradually died down. One by one most of the gas-lamps closed their tired eyes, and only the green paper-lantern above Hung Wapu's door continued to swing to and fro in the night-wind, while similar spots of colored light were visible in front of a few of the neighboring houses. Far away a clock struck the hour of midnight, and somewhere else, high up in the air, a bell rang out twelve strokes with a metallic sound. A cool current of air coming from the harbor swept through the hot, ill-smelling alley.
Hung Wapu went on whispering with his companion, and all the time he continued to polish his little saki-bowls. After a while the visitor fell asleep against the door-post and snored with all his might. Misty shadows began to fall slowly and the lights of the street lamps took on a red glow. Suddenly the figure of a drunken man appeared a little distance away; he was carefully feeling his way along the houses, but as soon as he came in sight of Hung Wapu's cellar, he suddenly seemed to sober up for a minute and made directly for it. "Saki!" he stammered, planting himself in front of Hung Wapu, whereupon the latter made a sign. The drunken man, a Japanese, whose face looked ghastly pale in the green light from the lantern, stared stupidly at the saki-bowls, which Hung Wapu was trying to shield from the tottering wretch with his arm.
"Twenty-eight bowls," he stammered to himself, "twenty-eight saki-bowls——"
At this moment the sleeping Chinaman awoke and looked at the drunken man with a silly laugh.
"Yes, twenty-eight saki-bowls; it's all right—twenty-eight saki-bowls," repeated the drunken Jap, and reeled on along the houses.
Hung Wapu seemed to have ended his day's work with the polishing of the twenty-eight saki-bowls; he piled them up in a heap and disappeared with them into his cellar, followed with extraordinary agility by the Chinese sleeper. He hurried through the chop-house, the occupants of which were all fast asleep on their straw mats, passed through the opium-den, and then, in the third room, divested himself of his Chinese coat. The silk-cap with the pigtail attached was flung into a corner, and then, dressed in a khaki uniform, he seated himself at a table and studied a map of the city of San Francisco, making notes in a small book by the light of a smoky oil lamp.
The drunken Jap, who had apparently had doubts about entering Hung Wapu's chop-house, tottered on down the quiet street and made for another paper-lantern, which hung above another cellar door about ten houses farther on.
Here too, curiously enough, he found the Chinese landlord sitting on the top step. He wanted to push him aside and stumble down the steps, but the Chinaman stopped him.
"How much?" stuttered the drunken man.
"How much?" answered the Chinaman. "How much money will the great stranger pay for a meal for his illustrious stomach in Si Wafang's miserable hut? Forty kasch, forty kasch the noble son of the Rising Sun must pay for a shabby meal in Si Wafang's wretched hut."