door all round the room one behind the other. I counted them as they came in at the door tied up with the bootlace. When they had all got through, I multiplied by eighteen before they had time to get round again. It was very difficult multiplying by eighteen, and the last thing I remember was thinking how much easier it would have been if only there had been twenty doors instead of eighteen.
'Oo-ugh, oo-ugh, oo-ugh!' I woke from a beautiful dreamless sleep with a start. 'Oo-ugh, oo-ugh, oo-ugh!' There was no mistaking it. There was something in the room. It was close by the bed. It was leering at me with its dreadful half human face through the mosquito nets. Its eyes weren't bulgy, but they were horribly wide open, and they had the kind of anticipatory gleam about them that the lizard's had when it looked down upon the fly. I knew that it would happen. I was absolutely paralysed. After that first start, which brought me to a half-sitting posture, I seemed fixed. I couldn't move; as for crying out, I didn't seem to have a throat at all. I and that baboon or gorilla, or whatever it was, faced one another with only the mosquito curtain in between.
Whether that baboon liked the look of me or not I can't say, but it seemed hours that he stood still and looked at me. He was quite silent now, and he put his hand—or should I call it a foot or a paw?—up to his chin, as if he were seriously considering me. It was real human. He had
