The punka-wallah slept. He could just make out the man's blurred shape—a shadow in the shadows—dog-curled, with the punkah rope looped round his foot. He kicked him gently, and the man stirred, but fell asleep again. He kicked him harder. The man sat up and stared, terrified; the whites of his eyes were distinctly visible. He seemed to have forgotten why he was there, and to imagine that he saw a ghost.
Cunningham spoke to him—he first words that came into his head.
“Go on pulling,” he said in English, quite kindly.
But if he had loosed his rifle off, the effect could not have been more instantaneous. Clutching his twisted rag of a turban in one hand, and kicking his leg free, he ran for it—leaped the veranda rail, and vanished—a night shadow, swallowed by its mother night.
“Come back!” called Cunningham. “Iderao! I won't hurt you!”
But there was no answer, save the tom-toms' thunder, swelling now into a devil's chorus-coming nearer. It seemed to be coming from the forest, but he reasoned that it could not be; it must be some village marriage feast, or perhaps an orgy; he had paid out what would seem to the villagers a lot of money, and it might be 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.