e that they were celebrating the
occasion. It was strange, though, that he could see no lights where the
village ought to be.

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