but each time I went out to look I returned with
the report that all was well, and finally he grew calmer and lay still.
Then at length his breathing became regular and I heard unmistakable sounds
of snoring--the first and only time in my life when snoring has been a
welcome and calming influence.

This, I remember, was the last thought in my mind before dozing off.

A difficulty in breathing woke me, and I found the blanket over my face.
But something else besides the blanket was pressing upon me, and my first
thought was that my companion had rolled off his mattress on to my own in
his sleep. I called to him and sat up, and at the same moment it came to me
that the tent was surrounded. That sound of multitudinous soft pattering
was again audible outside, filling the night with horror.

I called again to him, louder than before. He did not answer, but I missed
the sound of his snoring, and also noticed that the flap of the tent was
down. This was the unpardonable sin. I crawled out in the darkness to hook
it back securely, and it was then for the first time I realized positively
that the Swede was not here. He had gone.

I dashed out in a mad run, seized by a dreadful agitation, and the moment I
was out I plunged into a sort of torrent of humming that surrounded me
completely and came out of every quarter of the heavens at once. It was
that same familiar humming--gone mad! A swarm of great invisible bees might
have been about me in the air. The sound seemed to thicken the very
atmosphere, and I felt that my lungs worked with difficulty.

But my friend was in danger, and I could not hesitate.

The dawn was just about to break, and a faint whitish light spread upwards
over the clouds from a thin strip of clear horizon. No wind stirred. I
could just make out the bushes and river beyond, and the pale sandy
patches. In my excitement I ran frantically to and fro about the island,
calling him by name, shouting at the top of my voice the first words that
came into my head. But the willows smothered my voice, and the humming
muffled it, so that the sound only traveled a few feet round me. I plunged
among the bushes, tripping headlong, tumbling over roots, and scraping my
face as I tore this way and that among the preventing branches.

Then, quite unexpectedly, I came out upon the island's point and saw a dark
figure outlined between the water and the sky. It was the Swede. And
already he had one foot in the river! A moment