Darkness and the Snake that was always coming and never came! To prowl round and round some magazine, store, or boundary-stone with his carbine at the “support,” or to tramp up and down by the horse-lines, armed only with his cutting-whip; to stand in a sentry-box while the rain fell in sheets and there was no telling what the next flash of lightning might reveal—that was what would send him to a lunatic’s padded cell.
To see the Snake by day would give him a cruel, terrible fit—but to be aware of it in the dark would be final—and fatal to his reason (which was none too firmly enthroned). No, he had the dreadful feeling that his reason was none too solidly based and fixed. He had horrible experiences, apart from the snake-nightmares, nowadays. One night when he awoke and lay staring up at his mosquito-curtain in the blessed light of the big room-lamp (always provided in India on account of rifle thieves) he had suddenly felt an overwhelming surge of fear. He sat up. God!—he was in a marble box! These white walls and roof were not mosquito-netting, they were solid marble! He was in a tomb. He was buried alive. The air was growing foul. His screams would be absolutely inaudible. He screamed, and struck wildly at the cold cruel marble, and found it was soft, yielding netting after all. But it was a worse horror to find that he had thought it marble than if he had found it to be marble. He sprang from his cot.
“I am going mad,” he cried.
“Goin’?… Gorn, more like,” observed the disrobing room-corporal. “Why donchew keep orf the booze, Maffewson? You silly gapin’ goat. Git inter bed and shut yer ’ead—or I’ll get yew a night in clink, me lad—and wiv’out a light, see?”
Corporal Prag knew his victim’s little weakness and grinned maliciously as Dam sprang into bed without a word.
The Stone Jug without a gleam of light! Could a man choke himself with his own fingers if the worst came to the worst? The Digger and Stygian darkness—now—when he was going mad! Men could not be so cruel…. But they’d say he was drunk. He would lie still and cling with all his strength and heart and soul to sanity. He would think of That Evening with Lucille—and of her kisses. He would recite the Odes of Horace, the Aeneid, the Odyssey as far as he could remember them, and then fall back on Shakespeare and other English poets. Probably he knew a lot more Greek and Latin poetry (little as it was) than he did of English….
Corporal Prag improved the occasion as he unlaced his boots. “Bloomin’ biby! Afraid o’ the dark! See wot boozin’ brings yer to. Look at yer! An’ look at me. Non-c’misshn’d orficer in free an’ a ’arf years from j’inin’. Never tasted alc’ol in me life, an’ if any man offud me a glarse, d’ye know what I’d dew?”
“No, Corporal, I’d like to hear,” replied Dam. (Must keep the animal talking as long as possible for the sake of human company. He’d go mad at once, perhaps, when the Corporal went to bed.)
“I’d frow it strite in ’is faice, I would,” announced the virtuous youth. A big boot flopped heavily on the floor.
“I daresay you come of good old teetotal stock,” observed Dam, to make conversation. Perhaps the fellow would pause in his assault upon the other boot and reply—so lengthening out the precious minutes of diversion. Every minute was a minute nearer dawn….