Thought at first you meant the rattan-juice kind, from Sumatra." The gate of the town yawned black.

From the streets glimmered a few lanterns, like candles in a long cave.

But shunning these unfriendly corridors, he led her roundabout, now along the walls, now through the dim ways of an outlying hamlet.

A prolonged shriek of growing fright and anguish came slowly toward them--the cry of a wheelbarrow carrying the great carcass of a pig, waxy white and waxy red, like an image from a chamber of horrors.

In the blue twilight, fast deepening, the most familiar things became grotesque.