Digital heart book

From
its outside view I could thus make no deduction; and,
strange to say, the interior was concealed. 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.


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