ten-inch-long

Updated: July 14, 2025

The boy noticed that, by dark, all these windows and doors were closed tightly, for the Barbadian negro sleeps in an air-tight room. He does this, ostensibly, to keep out ten-inch-long centipedes, and bats, but, in reality, to keep out "jumbies" and ghosts, of which he is much more afraid. The greater part of the island seemed, to the boy, utterly unlike any place he had seen in the tropics.

Francis Rolt-Wheeler - Plotting in Pirate Seas