ntry was very quiet.
There are few things in the world quieter than a West African forest
in the daytime. It is obtrusively, emphatically quiet. It does not
let you forget how singularly quiet it is. And towards sundown the
quietude began to jar on Hatteras' nerves. He was besides very hungry.
To while away the time he took a stroll round the verandah.

He walked along the side of the house towards the back, and as he
neared the back he head a humming sound. The further he went the
louder it grew. It was something like the hum of a mill, only not so
metallic and not so loud; and it came from the rear of the house.

Hatteras turned the corner and what he saw was this--a shuttered
window and a cloud of flies. The flies were not aimlessly swarming
outside the window; they streamed in through the lattices of the
shutters in a busy practical way; they came in columns from the forest
and converged upon the shutters; and the hum sounded from within the
room.

Hatteras looked about for a Kru boy just for the sake of company, but,
at that moment there was not one to be seen. He felt the cold strike
at his spine, he went back to the room in which he had been sitting.
He sat again, but he sat shivering. The agent had left no work for
him.... The Kru boys had been anxious to explain something. The
humming of the flies about that shuttered window seemed to Hatteras
to have more explicit language than the Kru boys' chatterings. He
penetrated into the interior of the house, and reckoned up the doors.
He opened one of them ever so slightly, and the buzzing came through
like the hum of a wheel in a factory, revolving in the collar of
a strap. He flung the door open and stood upon the threshold. The
atmosphere of the room appalled him; he felt the sweat break cold upon
his forehead and a deadly sickness in all his body. Then he nerved
himself to enter.

At first he saw little because of the gloom. In a moment, however, he
made out a bed stretched along the wall and a thing stretched upon the
bed. The thing was more or less shapeless because it was covered with
a black, furry sort of rug. Hatteras, however, had little trouble in
defining it. He knew now for certain what it was that the Kru boys had
been so anxious to explain to him. He approached the bed and bent over
it, and as he bent over it the horrible thing occurred which left so
vivid an impression on Hatteras. The black, furry rug suddenly lifted
itself from the bed, beat abo