An usual bedroom. Dreams were there before you slept. A place of torment for Cimmerian eccentricities, a cockpit for boggarts and kobolds. He was sure now that something was in that cupboard, and he wondered, while the floorboards were clear for the journey, how long it would take to get under the mosquito netting once the lamp was blown out. A loud voice addressed him from the wood beams of the ceiling; a clear whistling cluck. He could make out a brief slender shadow up there which was cast by no visible object; and, anyhow, it was too small for so much loud confidence. It was motionless. It was a mistake, that reptilian mark. It was a stain in the wood. The voice spoke again aloft, chee-chak, chee-chak; not an unpleasant sound; rather like shameless and noisy kissing. The little shadow writhed forward a yard, as though the lamp had been shifted quietly, and that prompted similar shadows to move above, though the lamp remained still; abrupt divergent wriggles of creatures upside down. The ceiling was populated with lizards; one fell to the floor, rather solidly. That smack knocked the stuffing out of it. No. It was off—going to get into his bed, perhaps. A close night.
Did anyone ever manage to sleep through a tropic night? Not likely. You turned over, and then found that that side was hotter than the other. You turned over again. Not a sound. The lizards had ceased to kiss aloud, now the light was out. But a swift slithering passed over the boards beneath the bed. The silence was the heat. The heat was muffled. The silence was soft and hot, but heavy. It could not be pushed away. The darkness outside the curtains was waiting. For what? He was waiting too, for sleep, but it was no good waiting for that when the unseen was waiting for something else. The idea of that bolster beside him was to keep him cool, but it was an imbecile lump. He pushed it off with petulance.
That spider. There it was. It was looking at him out of a tunnel. Its eyes were as big as the headlights of a locomotive about to emerge. To emerge at any moment. Its hairy legs filled the tunnel. Its hunched legs made the tunnel dark. He could not move because he could not breathe. He was being held down for that brute. It was coming out. It put a hairy foot on his mouth. Faugh! That released him. Touched him off. The bolster was in his face. It was night still, not morning. Daylight was slow about it.
When next he woke the day was nearly there. The night had thinned; everything in the room could be seen in it, even through the mosquito curtain. It was cool at last, but the silence had not been broken.
Now it had gone. A bird was fluting in the garden, trying to remember a morning song. Strange, he felt rather like singing himself, though sleep had been only an intermittent nightmare. In that cool grey light the bare room was merely bare. That reminiscent bird had not yet got the tune right, but he kept at it on his lonesome, a meditative and conscientious little fellow. Quietly trying it over before anyone was about, to be ready for the sun.
Colet opened the shutters of the verandah, and stepped out. The garden below was asleep. Only its familiar spirit was awake, tuning up before sunrise. The garden was still in the mirk. The trees were night itself settling out of the sky, descending to the earth, spreading there unequally while being absorbed. The bathroom was the first door to the left along the verandah. The liquid fluting of that bird was bathing for the mind. It made it fresh and glad. The bathroom tiles were delicious to walk over; another touch or two and they would have been cold. In a corner was an earthenware cistern, with a brass dipper on its ledge. A lizard was stuck to the wall, upside down, a flesh-coloured creature with eager and prominent eyes. It raised its head to watch him. Almost indecent to strip before such an expectant gaze; but it went off, shocked, in a flash, when it saw what he was like. You held the full dipper as high as you could, and tried to imagine you would shrink from the fall of the water. The water was felt, but no more. There was no shock. The water was as soft as new milk.
By his chair on the verandah, when he came out, somebody had left biscuits and tea. These Chinese boys moved about as though they were disembodied spirits, and unless you were watching they were never more than wraiths in the very act of vanishing. At that moment he was sure that a Malayan sunrise, with some tea just after you had bathed, was not to be exchanged for a halo and a harp. This corner of the earth had leisured and regal scope, and its jubilant light, with the musky smell of its lush growth, was good enough for the pleasaunce of an archangel, only he might be upset by a sight of Aphrodite. The crowns of the dominant palms, and the filigree of the upper foliage of the shrubbery, were black against lambent gold, and that tide of fire was plainly welling rapidly to flood the garden. The colours below were already bright; the orange and ruby crotons were separated, and the blossoms on the vines. The sun was so quick that he could be seen moving up behind the screen; he was blazing over the top before the first moment of coolness and calm was forgotten. Wasps arrived with him, to blunder about the joists of the verandah, and they were not ordinary wasps, and knew it.
