midnight
-LSB- 4 -RSB- And as if the walls had ears , the meal made its appearance with that silent celerity which the retired Anglo-Indian -- who has sworn at native servants for thirty years -- misses so keenly , when he is relegated to the cumbersome ministrations of the British house-parlourmaid of Baling . `` By the way , '' Desmond remarked , as he dissected a fowl , cooked -- by the mercy of the gods -- in that elusive interval between toughness and putrescence , the pursuit of which gives to hot-weather housekeeping an excitement peculiarly its own , `` there 's bad news from the Infantry camp this morning . Poor old Buckley . A cramp seizure at midnight . Went out in three hours ; and was buried at dawn , Mackay showed me a note from Dr Lowndes saying he believed it was one of those odd freaks of disease , a spurious case . Sheer funk ; and nothing else . Camp was in a flourishing condition .