All the other chests, as I have said already, we had found gaping open, and their contents scattered abroad; the same remark we found to apply afterwards in the quarters of the seamen; only this camphor-wood chest, a singular exception, was both closed and locked.
I took an axe to it, readily forced the paltry Chinese fastening, and, like a Custom-House officer, plunged my hands among the contents.

For some while I groped among linen and cotton.

Then my teeth were set on edge with silk, of which I drew forth several strips covered with mysterious characters.

And these settled the business, for I recognised them as a kind of bed-hanging popular with the commoner class of the Chinese.

Nor were further evidences wanting, such as night-clothes of an extraordinary design, a three-stringed Chinese fiddle, a silk handkerchief full of roots and herbs, and a neat apparatus for smoking opium, with a liberal provision of the drug.