on standing in front of me holding out a hand to assist
me. I stared at him in a dazed way, rubbing the arm he had twisted for me.
Nothing came to me to say, somehow.

"I lost consciousness for a moment or two," I heard him say. "That's what
saved me. It made me stop thinking about them."

"You nearly broke my arm in two," I said, uttering my only connected
thought at the moment. A numbness came over me.

"That's what saved you!" he replied. "Between us, we've managed to set them
off on a false tack somewhere. The humming has ceased. It's gone--for the
moment at any rate!"

A wave of hysterical laughter seized me again, and this time spread to my
friend too--great healing gusts of shaking laughter that brought a
tremendous sense of relief in their train. We made our way back to the fire
and put the wood on so that it blazed at once. Then we saw that the tent
had fallen over and lay in a tangled heap upon the ground.

We picked it up, and during the process tripped more than once and caught
our feet in sand.

"It's those sand-funnels," exclaimed the Swede, when the tent was up again
and the firelight lit up the ground for several yards about us. "And look
at the size of them!"

All round the tent and about the fireplace where we had seen the moving
shadows there were deep funnel-shaped hollows in the sand, exactly similar
to the ones we had already found over the island, only far bigger and
deeper, beautifully formed, and wide enough in some instances to admit the
whole of my foot and leg.

Neither of us said a word. We both knew that sleep was the safest thing we
could do, and to bed we went accordingly without further delay, having
first thrown sand on the fire and taken the provision sack and the paddle
inside the tent with us. The canoe, too, we propped in such a way at the
end of the tent that our feet touched it, and the least motion would
disturb and wake us.

In case of emergency, too, we again went to bed in our clothes, ready for a
sudden start.

It was my firm intention to lie awake all night and watch, but the
exhaustion of nerves and body decreed otherwise, and sleep after a while
came over me with a welcome blanket of oblivion. The fact that my companion
also slept quickened its approach. At first he fidgeted and constantly sat
up, asking me if I "heard this" or "heard that." He tossed about on his
cork mattress, and said the tent was moving and the river had risen over
the point of the island,