Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 11, 2025
Because it was dark and his memory not working properly, time had ceased to be for him, and to-day was as yesterday and to-morrow. The ceiling-cloth above him was blood-red with light from the sepoys' fire in the compound, and all was as it had been when he had first lain down the night before. And yet.... Suddenly he raised himself upon the charpoy and called huskily for the khansamah.
Therefore I explained more clearly than ever that I liked him immensely, and would be happy to see him in the daytime; but that I did not care to sleep under his roof. This was after dinner, when Tietjens had gone out to lie in the verandah. ''Pon my soul, I don't wonder, said Strickland, with his eyes on the ceiling-cloth. 'Look at that!
He did it perfectly, down there in the dark, and went his way. Thousands of years later, there was born a man of my acquaintance who, for good and sufficient reason, had an almost insane horror of anything in the nature of a ceiling-cloth. He used to make excuses for not going into the dry goods shops at Christmas, when hastily enlarged annexes are hidden, roof and sides, with embroideries.
And well it might, when a restless little rat was running to and fro inside the dingy ceiling-cloth, and a piece of loose window-sash was making fifty breaks off the window-bolt as it shook in the breeze! Impossible to mistake the sound of billiard balls! Impossible to mistake the whir of a ball over the slate! But I was to be excused.
'He may, for aught I know; but I don't think it's likely. He has only been here two or three days, I answered. 'What's your notion? 'I can't quite tell. How the dickens did the man get the wrong side of the ceiling-cloth? There was a heavy coughing outside Strickland's bedroom door. This showed that Bahadur Khan, his body-servant, had waked from sleep and wished to put Strickland to bed.
It was a desirable bungalow, eight-roomed and heavily thatched against any chance of leakage from rain. Under the pitch of the roof ran a ceiling-cloth which looked just as neat as a white-washed ceiling. The landlord had repainted it when Strickland took the bungalow.
No wonder the snakes live here, said Strickland, climbing farther into the roof. I could see his elbow thrusting with the rod. 'Come out of that, whoever you are! Heads below there! It's falling. I saw the ceiling-cloth nearly in the centre of the room bag with a shape that was pressing it downwards and downwards towards the lighted lamp on the table.
I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Strickland shouting from his side of the house 'Tietjens has come back to her place! And so she had. The great deerhound was couched statelily on her own bedstead on her own blanket, while, in the next room, the idle, empty, ceiling-cloth waggled as it trailed on the table.
"How's a' wi' you?" said Jock, and came in by the side o' the Sacramento profligate, two inches, or it may have been one, taller than he. "You're long," said the man, opening his eyes. "But I am longer." An' they sent a whistle through the night an' howkit out Sandy Vowle from his bit bungalow, and he came in an' stood by the side o' Jock, an' the pair just fillit the room to the ceiling-cloth.
Go! The man picked up a lamp, and went into the dining-room, Strickland following, and almost pushing him with the muzzle of the rifle. He looked for a moment at the black depths behind the ceiling-cloth; at the writhing snake under foot; and last, a gray glaze settling on his face, at the thing under the tablecloth. 'Hast thou seen? said Strickland after a pause. 'I have seen.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking