For some time I lay awake, fearful of a recurrence of the horrible phenomenon, but gradually sleep overcame me, and I did not wake again till seven o'clock on a lovely summer morning.
That day I took two long walks, closely followed by my escort. They walked immediately behind me, and often we stopped to converse, or to sit down to rest and smoke a cigarette together. They told me all their family history, and about their wives and children, and really they made themselves as agreeable as they possibly could. In the afternoon we climbed up the mountains to one of the many cafés, and had chocolate and cakes, which they thoroughly enjoyed. When I finally went back to the hotel for the night they complained of being tired, and hoped I would not walk so far on the morrow. Their idea of enjoyment was the usual foreign custom of taking a seat outside a street café, and sitting there hour after hour idly watching the passers-by, smoking endless cigarettes and drinking beer.
That night I prepared myself for a recurrence of the abnormal phenomenon I had witnessed, and gathered up all my courage, and decided to attack it with the Sacred command. For a long time I lay awake, but nothing happened, and finally I fell asleep.
I awoke to pandemonium. My room was in a hub-bub of high-pitched noise. Screams of glee and frolic, shouts of thin laughter, and pattering feet with little thuds interspersed. The sounds were all pitched in an unknown key. They can best be described as ordinary sounds intensely rarefied, and pitched in so high a treble that they had run out of the scale altogether.
It was a much darker night, and very hot. Thunder clouds hung over the town, and now and again there was a gleam of lightning and a mutter of distant thunder. I peeped over the edge of the bed, but could see nothing. The noises continued with unabated merriment. A hundred creatures of sorts apparently were playing round me.
Summoning all my courage I sat up and switched on the light. What I saw must read like pure nonsense to the majority, but nevertheless I mean to record facts as they happened to me.
About a dozen small forms, half-man, half-animal, were playing leap-frog round the room. They were about three feet in height, some slightly smaller, and though their bodies, legs and feet were human, their heads resembled apes.