As though by magic, a figure appeared out of the darkness before them.
“A torch!” croaked Sobrinini. “A torch to drive the shadows back into the night. Bring a torch. Make haste.”
The figure disappeared and in a few seconds returned with a light. The features of the slave seemed savage and sinister in the flickering illumination.
“Give it to me! Give it to me!” cried Sobrinini irritably. “Now, slave, begone!”
Instantly the figure vanished again, and Bomba looked about him apprehensively. For a moment he had the fantastic notion that the shadows all about him were filled with ghostly figures that appeared and disappeared by magic and made no noise.
But Sobrinini stalked before him, flaring torch in hand. Bomba followed her into a room so small that the farthest corners were made bright by the wavering light of the torch.
As Bomba entered the place he had a strange feeling that he had seen it before, had been in it before, had once looked about him as he was now looking at the few articles of furniture and the pictures on the walls.
But even while he felt this so strongly that it seemed almost uncanny, Bomba knew that it could not be so and that it was impossible he had ever enacted this scene or anything like it before.
In all his wild life in the jungle, he had never seen anything like that strange object in one corner of the room, raised from the floor by posts and covered with a cloth. If Bomba had been told that the strange object was a bed, he would have been no better informed than before. As far as he could remember, he had never slept in anything like that in his life.
While he was taking in the various features of the room, Sobrinini deposited the torch in a socket on the wall and turned again to Bomba.