At any rate, the result was that the gallery into which Jack had now entered was thick with flies, zinging through the darkness like spent grapeshot on the fringes of a battle, and crunching into his shaved head and raising welts. They had been drawn here, from all over the Indies, by the smell of diverse sick or injured creatures and their feed and their manure; for this hospital with all its stone screens and lattice-works was like a giant censer dispensing such fragrances into the air of Ahmadabad.