I burst out laughing too, and we all laughed. A strain of the psychical pressure caused these explosions of unnatural laughter, it was an effort of repressed forces to seek relief, and it was a temporary safety valve for all of us. I cried, "How criminally stupid of me." I tried, determined to be consistent and find an explanation. I continued, "I forgot to buy the fish and the loaf at the village. The chattering woman put everything out of my head. I must have left it lying on the counter." Adarsh interrupted, "The oatmeal too is much less than it was this morning." I uttered, "But buddy, guess we have enough, and we shall be out by here within 24 hours, and buy more provisions." Adarsh muttered, "I hope so to God." I conversed, "My apologies to everyone. I shall not repeat this mistake." Jagadeep remarks, "All right!!! No worries, buddy, we have enough for tonight." I smiled at him. The dinner was prepared, and we had enough for tonight, and tomorrow, also we will leave by tomorrow at the crack of the dawn. Our meal was good, and we washed up the dishes, preparing for the night. We were sitting on the deck chair, but our talks were meager, but we were not silent. I felt the apprehension, and I thought, I would be able to face it squarely. I heard the sound of the gong, which became now almost incessant, and filled the stillness of the night with a faint continuous ringing, rather than a series of distinct notes. At one time, it was behind, and at other times in front of us, sometimes, I fancied, it came from the bushes on our left, and then again from the clumps on our right, more often, it hovered directly overhead like the whirring of wings, it was everywhere.

The sound seemed to be at our right, left, behind, and over our heads, surrounding us. The sound defies description, but nothing within my knowledge is like that, ceaseless muffled humming, rising the deserted swamp. The strain grew every minute, and we did not know what to expect and make some preparations for defense. We could anticipate nothing, no explanation, which I made in the day, came to haunt me, with a foolish, and unsatisfactory nature. I thought talks with my companions were inevitable, after all, we had to spend our night here and sleep in this boat. Plain talk was imperative, so I began talking about our last vacations, and our office. Adarsh said, "We strayed out of the safe line somewhere." Suddenly, the gong sound had come nearer, ringing much louder than before, and directly over our heads. Jagadeep uttered, "I don't think, that a gramophone would show any record of that, the sound, the vibrations reach differently altogether. Which precisely, how the fourth dimensional sound might be supposed to make itself heard." While my companions were talking about the strange sound, I was peering at the dark. The clouds were massed all over the sky, and there was no trace of moonlight coming through. Jagadeep continued, "It has something about it, which is out of common experience, which is unknown, a sound unknown to humans."

The solitude camping, the feeling of loneliness surged in me, the fear which I had was not ordinary ghostly fear, but it was infinite, it seemed to arise from the ancestral sense of terror, more profoundly disturbing, that I had known. The frontiers of some unknown world, lay close about it, perhaps, a dweller for the outer space, a sort of peephole to spy upon the people of the earth. A point where the veil between our world, and theirs were thin. This region was a sojourn for us, we should be victims or sacrifice for the elemental forces of this region. We have disturbed the elemental forces of this region, the horror of malefic purpose, resentful of our audacious intrusion into their breeding place. We have trespassed into some ancient shrine, someplace where the emotional forces of former worshippers still clung, and at any rate, this place was unpolluted by men. A place where spiritual agencies were within reach, and aggressive. In the end, our minds would succumb to the awful spell of this region, and we should be drawn across the frontier into their world. We were under the light of the boat, which illuminated the area around the boat.