A few frogs begin it. There are ululations, wells of mellow sound bubbling to overflow in the dark, and they multiply and unite till the quality of the sound, subdued and pleasant at first, is quite changed. It becomes monstrous. The night trembles in the powerful beat of a rhythmic clangour. One cannot think of frogs, hearing that metallic din. At one time, soon after it begins, the chorus seems the far hubbub, mingled and levelled by distance, of a multitude of people running and disputing in a place where we who are listening know that no people are. The noise comes nearer and louder till it is palpitating around us. It might be the life of the forest, immobile and silent all day, now released and beating upwards in deafening paroxysms.
Alongside the engine room casing amidships the engineers have fixed an open-air mess-table, with a hurricane lamp in its midst, having but a brief halo of light which hardly distinguishes the pickle jar from the marmalade pot. A haze of mosquitoes quivers round the light. The air is hot and lazy, and the engineers sit about limply in trousers and shirts, the latter open and showing bosoms as various as faces. The men cheer themselves with comical plaints about the heat, the food, the Brazils, and make sudden dabs at bare flesh when the insects bite them. The Chief rallies his boys as would a cheery dad--Sandy, though, is nearly his own age, but still much of a lad, quietly despondent--and the Chief heartily insists on food, like it or lump it. I go forward to the captain's tea table on the poop deck, where we have two hurricane lamps, and where the figures of us round the table, in that dismal glim, are the thin phantoms of men. The lamps have been lighted only that moment, and as we take our seats, the insects come. Just as sharply as though something derisive and invisible were throwing them at us, big mole crickets bounce into our plates. A cicada, though I was then unaware of his identity, a monstrous fly which looked as large as a rat, and with a head like a lantern, alighted before me on the cloth, and remained still. Picking it up tentatively it sprang a startling police rattle between my finger and thumb, and the other chaps shouted their merriment. The steward places a cup of tea before each of us, and in an interval of the talk the Skipper announces a smell of paraffin in his cup. We experiment with ours, and gravely confirm. The surgeon, bending close to a light with his cup, the deep characteristics of his face strongly accentuated--he seems but a bodiless head in the dark--says he detects globules of fat. The Skipper crudely outlines this horror to the steward, who makes an inaudible reply in German, and disappears down the companion. We get a new and innocent brew.