No sooner had the creaking door given admittance to the woman than he called out sharply to her:
“Where have you been all this time? Come, make haste, get me another pipe.”
The wretched creature obeyed without a murmur. She advanced to the baleh baleh, took some tandjoe out of a small box, warmed it at the flame of the palita, and then mixed it with a little very finely cut tobacco. Then she rolled it in her fingers into a little ball about the size of a large pea, put this into the bowl of the opium pipe, and handed it to the wretched smoker.
During these operations, and when she leaned forward to hand him the pipe, the miserable smoker, no longer master of his passions, and wholly unable to restrain himself, had acted in a manner so outrageously indecent, that Grashuis cried out:
“Oh, this is too revolting! Come, let us be off, I cannot stand it any longer.”
Just at that moment a cry was heard a little further down the half-dark passage.
“Good God, this is most infamous! Is it possible—Let us get out—Let us get out, friends—fire from Heaven will fall upon us and consume us!”
It was van Beneden who had walked a few steps further down the passage, and had been peering into one of the recesses down there. Now he wildly rushed out of the place, dragging his friends almost by main force along with him.
“What in the world is the matter with you?” asked Grenits.
“Oh, I can’t tell you what I have seen,” cried August van Beneden, hardly able to speak plainly in his excitement. “Come along.”