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.

He went back and lay on the bed again, leaning the rifle against the
cot-frame, and trying by sheer will-power to prevent the blood from
bursting his veins. He realized before long that he was parched with
thirst, and reached out for the water-jar that stood beside the lamp;
but as he started to drink he realized that a crawling evil was
swimming round and round in rings in the water. In a fit of horror he
threw the thing away and smashed it into a dozen fragments in a corner.
He saw a dozen rats, at least, scamper to drink before the water could
evaporate or filter through the floor; and when they were gone there
was no half-drowned crawling thing either. They had eaten it.

He clutched his rifle to him. The barrel was hot, but the feel of it