Ben Nazir was a man who had traveled a great deal, and picked up
western notions of hospitality to add to the inborn eastern sense
of sacredness in the relation between host and guest. It seems
that an hour or two later he came to take me down to a Gargantuan
meal, but, feeling the chair against the door, and hearing
snores, he decided it was better manners to let me lie in peace.

So I did not wake up again until after midnight. The moonlight
was streaming through a little high-perched window, and fell on
the white-robed, ghostly-looking figure of a man, who sat with
crossed legs on the end of the bed. I thought I was dead and
in hell.

That is no picturesque exaggeration about a man's hair standing
when he is terrified. It really does. I would have yelled
aloud, if the breath would have come, but there is a trick of
sudden fear that seems to grip your lungs and hold them impotent.
The thing on the end of the bed had no eye-brows. It grinned as
if it knew all about evil, and were hungry, and living men were
its food.

I don't know how long I stared at the thing, but it seemed
like a week. At last it spoke, and I burst into a sweat with
the reaction.

"Good job you don't know how to fasten a door with a chair. I'll
have to show you that trick, or you'll be dying before your time.
Sh-h-h! Don't make a noise!"