Within minutes, night dropped like the shutting of a door—absolute blackness fell upon us. The sounds of the day morphed into something deeper and mysterious, with trills and scratchings and boomings and calls like the cries of the damned. Now the insects began to make their appearance, starting with the mosquitoes. There was no fire. Woody lit a Coleman lantern that forced back the darkness a little, and we huddled in its pool of light in the great forest while large animals tramped, heard but unseen, in the jungle around us.
