quickly as possible turned out
every one of the six lamps. To be in a room so brilliantly lighted,
where my every movement could be observed from outside, while I could
see nothing but impenetrable darkness at every window, was by all laws
of warfare an unnecessary concession to the enemy. And this enemy, if
enemy it was to be, was far too wily and dangerous to be granted any
such advantages.

I stood in the corner of the room with my back against the wall, and my
hand on the cold rifle-barrel. The table, covered with my books, lay
between me and the door, but for the first few minutes after the lights
were out the darkness was so intense that nothing could be discerned at
all. Then, very gradually, the outline of the room became visible, and
the framework of the windows began to shape itself dimly before my eyes.

After a few minutes the door (its upper half of glass), and the two
windows that looked out upon the front verandah, became specially
distinct; and I was glad that this was so, because if the Indians came
up to the house I should be able to see their approach, and gather
something of their plans. Nor was I mistaken, for there presently came
to my ears the peculiar hollow sound of a canoe landing and being
carefully dragged up over the rocks. The paddles I distinctly heard
being placed underneath, and the silence that ensued thereupon I rightly
interpreted to mean that the Indians were stealthily approaching the
house. . . .

While it would be absurd to claim that I was not alarmed--even
frightened--at the gravity of the situation and its possible outcome, I
speak the whole truth when I say that I was not overwhelmingly afraid
for myself. I was conscious that even at this stage of the night I was
passing into a psychical condition in which my sensations seemed no
longer normal. Physical fear at no time entered into the nature of my
feelings; and though I kept my hand upon my rifle the greater part of
the night, I was all the time conscious that its assistance could be of
little avail against the terrors that I had to face. More than once I
seemed to feel most curiously that I was in no real sense a part of the
proceedings, nor actually involved in them, but that I was playing the
part of a spectator--a spectator, moreover, on a psychic rather than on
a material plane. Many of my sensations that night were too vague for
definite description and analysis, but the main feeling that will stay
with me to the en