“I’m trying to get a bath in this barrel that you sent me up.”
“Taking a bath!” shouted the landlord in a startled voice, “a bath at zees time of zee night. You must be crazee. Anyhow, you drop no more of zee water on me. I sleep zee room undaire.”
“Well, he doesn’t look as if a little water would hurt him,” commented Billy, as the landlord’s footsteps retreated down the passage.
The boys were soon in bed, but not to sleep. Their exciting day amid new scenes had rendered them wakeful and then, too, the beds of the Hotel Bomobori were not couches of roses. The sheets and pillows smelled abominably of camphor and mildew, and the latter appeared to have been, or so Billy declared, stuffed with corn cobs. The same applied to the mattresses. But as if this was not enough, there came a sudden shrill cry from somewhere in the room:
“Beck-ee! Beck-ee! Beck-ee!”
“What in the nation was that?” cried Billy, considerably startled.
“Somebody calling for 'Becky,’” laughed Jack, “but Rebecca won’t answer. Go to sleep, Billy, if you can, on these miserable beds. It must be some insect.”
“I hope it isn’t anything venomous,” muttered Raynor.
“Better keep your curtains close drawn and then it can’t get at you, anyhow,” advised Jack.
“But then it shuts out all the air and I almost suffocate,” complained Billy.