After another cannon, a three--
cushion one to judge by the whir, I argued no more. I had found my ghost and
would have given worlds to have escaped from that dak-bungalow. I listened,
and with each listen the game grew clearer.
There was whir on whir and click on click. Sometimes there was a double click
and a whir and another click. Beyond any sort of doubt, people were playing
billiards in the next room. And the next room was not big enough to hold a
billiard table!
Between the pauses of the wind I heard the game go forward--stroke after
stroke. I tried to believe that I could not hear voices; but that attempt was
a failure.
Do you know what fear is? Not ordinary fear of insult, injury or death, but
abject, quivering dread of something that you cannot see--fear that dries the
inside of the mouth and half of the throat--fear that makes you sweat on the
palms of the hands, and gulp in order to keep the uvula at work? This is a
fine Fear--a great cowardice, and must be felt to be appreciated. The very
improbability of billiards in a dak-bungalow proved the reality of the thing.
No man--drunk or sober--could imagine a game at billiards, or invent the
spitting crack of a "screw-cannon."
A severe course of dak-bungalows has this disadvantage--it breeds infinite
credulity.
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