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. I forgot all about being afraid, they were so amazingly grotesque, and they were so thoroughly happy. One would go down on all fours, and the creatures immediately behind him would leap his back, and so on down the chain, and all the while they kept up that shrill, high-pitched note of intense enjoyment. I have come to the conclusion that it was the light that finally put an end to their revels. They took no heed of me, but gradually their energies flagged, they faded and became blurred in outline; one by one they simply went out like sparks until not one was left. Though I occupied that room for a month I was never disturbed again. Perfect quiet reigned for the rest of my stay. At the end of five days a police official came to call upon me, and informed me that my identity had been perfectly established by the British Embassy at Vienna, and that my escort was now withdrawn. He also begged to return my typewriter, rendered utterly useless I discovered, to my great dismay, and the dispatch box arrived intact the next morning. I have no explanation to offer of the phenomena I have described. They belong to the many unsolved mysteries that constantly surround us. It will be said that my mind was in an excited and abnormal condition owing to my adventures in the Customs House, and that I probably imagined the scene instead of really seeing the creatures I have described. I agree that probably my mental faculties, for the time being, were possibly abnormal, but I hold that when the consciousness is in an abnormal condition it is naturally much easier to see the abnormal. At ordinary times the veil of the flesh seems denser, and the consciousness much less acute.