midnight
growled the Risaldar with a scowl . But he grinned into his beard . `` Well , to your homes , then -- but be ready ! '' The midnight jackals howled their discontent while heat-cracked India writhed in stuffy torment that was only one degree less than unendurable . Through the stillness and the blackness of the night came every now and then the high-pitched undulating wails of women , that no one answered-for , under that Tophet-lid of blackness , punctured by the low-hung , steel-white stars , men neither knew nor cared whose child had died . Life and hell-hot torture and indifference -- all three were one . There was no moon , nothing to make the inferno visible , except that here and there an oil lamp on some housetop glowed like a blood-spot against the blackness .