Soon the squeaking became intolerable, and Cunningham swore at him—­ in English, because he spoke little of any native language yet, and had not the least idea in any case what the punka-wallah’s tongue might be.  For a while after that the pulling was more even; he lay on one elbow, letting the swinging mat fan just miss his ear, and examining his rifle and pistols for lack of anything better to keep him from going mad.  Then, suddenly, the pulling ceased altogether.  Silence and hell heat shut down on him like a coffin lid.  Even the lamp flame close beside him seemed to grow dim; the weight of black night that was suffocating him seemed to crush light out of the flame as well.

No living mortal could endure that, he imagined.  He swore aloud, but there was no answer, so he got up, after crashing his rifle-butt down on the floor to scare away anything that crawled.  For a moment he stood, undecided whether to take the lamp or rifle with him—­then decided on the rifle, for the lamp might blow out in some unexpected night gust, whereas if he left it where it was it would go on burning and show him the way back to bed again.  Besides, he was too unaccustomed to the joy of owning the last new thing in sporting rifles to hesitate for long about what to keep within his grasp.

Through the open door he could see nothing but pitch-blackness, unpunctuated even by a single star.  There were no lights where the tents stood, so he judged that even the accustomed natives had found the added heat of Mahommed Gunga’s watch-fires intolerable and had raked them out; but from where he imagined that the village must be came the dum-tu-dum-tu-dum of tom-toms, like fever blood pulsating in the veins of devils of the night.

The punka-wallah slept.  He could just make out the man’s blurred shape —­a shadow in the shadows—­dog-curled, with the punkah rope looped round his foot.  He kicked him gently, and the man stirred, but fell asleep again.  He kicked him harder.  The man sat up and stared, terrified; the whites of his eyes were distinctly visible.  He seemed to have forgotten why he was there, and to imagine that he saw a ghost.

Cunningham spoke to him—­he first words that came into his head.

“Go on pulling,” he said in English, quite kindly.

But if he had loosed his rifle off, the effect could not have been more instantaneous.  Clutching his twisted rag of a turban in one hand, and kicking his leg free, he ran for it—­leaped the veranda rail, and vanished—­a night shadow, swallowed by its mother night.

“Come back!” called Cunningham.  “Iderao!  I won’t hurt you!”

But there was no answer, save the tom-toms’ thunder, swelling now into a devil’s chorus-coming nearer.  It seemed to be coming from the forest, but he reasoned that it could not be; it must be some village marriage feast, or perhaps an orgy; he had paid out what would seem to the villagers a lot of money, and it might be that they were celebrating the occasion.  It was strange, though, that he could see no lights where the village ought to be.