Then his eye caught sight of something blacker than the shadows--something long and thin and creepy that moved, and he remembered that bed, where the pans of water would protect him, was the only safe place.
So he returned into the hot, black silence where the tiny lamp-flame guttered and threw shadows.

He wondered why it guttered.

It seemed to be actually short of air.

There were four rooms, he remembered, to the bungalow, all connected and each opening outward by a door that faced one of the four sides; he wondered whether the outer doors were opened to admit a draught, and started to investigate.
Two of them were shut tight, and he could not kick them open; the dried-out teak and the heavy iron bolts held as though they had been built to resist a siege; the noise that he made as he rattled at them frightened a swarm of unseen things--unguessed-at shapes--that scurried away.

He thought he could see beady little eyes that looked and disappeared and circled round and stopped to look again.