A hyena would convince a Sadducee of the Resurrection of
the Dead--the worst sort of Dead. Then came the ratub--a curious meal, half
native and half English in composition--with the old khansamah babbling behind
my chair about dead and gone English people, and the wind-blown candles
playing shadow-bo-peep with the bed and the mosquito-curtains. It was just the
sort of dinner and evening to make a man think of every single one of his past
sins, and of all the others that he intended to commit if he lived.
Sleep, for several hundred reasons, was not easy. The lamp in the bath-room
threw the most absurd shadows into the room, and the wind was beginning to
talk nonsense.
Just when the reasons were drowsy with blood-sucking I heard the regular--
"Let--us--take--and--heave--him--over" grunt of doolie-bearers in the
compound. First one doolie came in, then a second, and then a third. I heard
the doolies dumped on the ground, and the shutter in front of my door shook.
"That's some one trying to come in," I said. But no one spoke, and I persuaded
myself that it was the gusty wind. The shutter of the room next to mine was
attacked, flung back, and the inner door opened. "That's some Sub-Deputy
Assistant," I said, "and he has brought his friends with him.
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