hell heat shut down on him like a coffin lid. Even the lamp flame
close beside him seemed to grow dim; the weight of black night that
was suffocating him seemed to crush light out of the flame as well.

No living mortal could endure that, he imagined. He swore aloud, but
there was no answer, so he got up, after crashing his rifle-butt down
on the floor to scare away anything that crawled. For a moment he
stood, undecided whether to take the lamp or rifle with him--then
decided on the rifle, for the lamp might blow out in some unexpected
night gust, whereas if he left it where it was it would go on burning
and show him the way back to bed again. Besides, he was too
unaccustomed to the joy of owning the last new thing in sporting rifles
to hesitate for long about what to keep within his grasp.

Through the open door he could see nothing but pitch-blackness,
unpunctuated even by a single star. There were no lights where the
tents stood, so he judged that even the accustomed natives had found
the added heat of Mahommed Gunga's watch-fires intolerable and had
raked them out; but from where he imagined that the village must be
came the dum-tu-dum-tu-dum of tom-toms, like fever blood pulsating in
the veins of devils of the night.

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.