For a moment he had a half-formed intention to shout for Mahommed Gunga; but he checked that, reasoning that the Rajput might think he was afraid.  Then his eye caught sight of something blacker than the shadows—­something long and thin and creepy that moved, and he remembered that bed, where the pans of water would protect him, was the only safe place.

So he returned into the hot, black silence where the tiny lamp-flame guttered and threw shadows.  He wondered why it guttered.  It seemed to be actually short of air.  There were four rooms, he remembered, to the bungalow, all connected and each opening outward by a door that faced one of the four sides; he wondered whether the outer doors were opened to admit a draught, and started to investigate.

Two of them were shut tight, and he could not kick them open; the dried-out teak and the heavy iron bolts held as though they had been built to resist a siege; the noise that he made as he rattled at them frightened a swarm of unseen things—­unguessed-at shapes—­that scurried away.  He thought he could see beady little eyes that looked and disappeared and circled round and stopped to look again.  He could hear creepy movements in the stillness.  It seemed better to leave those doors alone.

One other door, which faced that of his own room, was open wide, and he could feel the forest through it; there was nothing to be seen, but the stillness moved.  The velvet blackness was deeper by a shade, and the heat, uprising to get even with the sky, bore up a stench with it.  There was no draught, no movement except upward.  Earth was panting-in time, it seemed, to the hellish thunder of the tom-toms.

He went back and lay on the bed again, leaning the rifle against the cot-frame, and trying by sheer will-power to prevent the blood from bursting his veins.  He realized before long that he was parched with thirst, and reached out for the water-jar that stood beside the lamp; but as he started to drink he realized that a crawling evil was swimming round and round in rings in the water.  In a fit of horror he threw the thing away and smashed it into a dozen fragments in a corner.  He saw a dozen rats, at least, scamper to drink before the water could evaporate or filter through the floor; and when they were gone there was no half-drowned crawling thing either.  They had eaten it.

He clutched his rifle to him.  The barrel was hot, but the feel of it gave him a sense of companionship.  And then, as he lay back on the bed again, the lamp went out.  He groped for it and shook it.  There was no oil.

Now, what had been hot horror turned to fear that passed all understanding—­to the hate that does not reason—­to the cold sweat breaking on the roasted skin.  Where the four walls had been there was blackness of immeasurable space.  He could hear the thousand-footed cannibals of night creep nearer—­driven in toward him by the dinning of the tom-toms.  He felt that his bed was up above a scrambling swarm of black-legged things that fought.