There was nothing else in the room except a pile of rusty metal in one corner. The whole place was depressingly dirty and dreary. He thought that he would feel better without the light. He made his way to the center of the room, and stretched upwards. Finding that he could just reach the cord, he jerked it; and returned in the darkness to his cot.
He lay there quietly, trying to calm his nerves. He wondered what they would do with him....
He was still wondering the same thing at the end of four days. They did not move him. They did nothing except come and look at him—a great many of them at first, but less and less as time went on. They came in the daytime—never at night. They fed him; and a few still tried to talk to him. This pleased him, and he strove eagerly to understand and imitate; but they soon got tired and stopped.
He learned to distinguish the males and females among the people that came, by differences in stature, length of hair, and clothing. He observed, with complete bewilderment, that the males often carried in their hands burning cylinders which they raised regularly to their mouths, blowing out smoke into the air. He guessed, finally, that this must be some sort of sanitary precaution.
Now, however, he was left alone most of the time. They brought him food, and then went away. He was uneasy. Physically, he felt far from well. The damp air made his throat and chest ache; and he feared that the long deprivation of sunlight was hurting him. He could not understand.
Gathering his courage one day, he attempted to open the door. He reached up and turned the knob the way he had seen the people do. But it would not move when he pushed. He remembered the clicking sound he had heard every time after they went out.
He became frightened. He did not understand this confinement. Why would they not let him out?
There passed another day, of mental torture. Would they let him die in this dark, dreary place? Had all his efforts merely led to a lonely, purposeless death?
He wondered what they would do if he went out of his own accord; and finally decided that he must do it, even at the risk of offending them. Further inactivity he could not bear.