ourse, distinct events in such a place.

The scarcity of wood made it a business to keep the fire going, for the
wind, that drove the smoke in our faces wherever we sat, helped at the same
time to make a forced draught. We took it in turn to make some foraging
expeditions into the darkness, and the quantity the Swede brought back
always made me feel that he took an absurdly long time finding it; for the
fact was I did not care much about being left alone, and yet it always
seemed to be my turn to grub about among the bushes or scramble along the
slippery banks in the moonlight. The long day's battle with wind and
water--such wind and such water!--had tired us both, and an early bed was
the obvious program. Yet neither of us made the move for the tent. We lay
there, tending the fire, talking in desultory fashion, peering about us
into the dense willow bushes, and listening to the thunder of wind and
river. The loneliness of the place had entered our very bones, and silence
seemed natural, for after a bit the sound of our voices became a trifle
unreal and forced; whispering would have been the fitting mode of
communication, I felt, and the human voice, always rather absurd amid the
roar of the elements, now carried with it something almost illegitimate. It
was like talking out loud in church, or in some place where it was not
lawful, perhaps not quite safe, to be overheard.

The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million willows, swept by a
hurricane, and surrounded by hurrying deep waters, touched us both, I
fancy. Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there beneath the
moon, remote from human influence, on the frontier of another world, an
alien world, a world tenanted by willows only and the souls of willows. And
we, in our rashness, had dared to invade it, even to make use of it!
Something more than the power of its mystery stirred in me as I lay on the
sand, feet to fire, and peered up through the leaves at the stars. For the
last time I rose to get firewood.

"When this has burnt up," I said firmly, "I shall turn in," and my
companion watched me lazily as I moved off into the surrounding shadows.

For an unimaginative man I thought he seemed unusually receptive that
night, unusually open to suggestion of things other than sensory. He too
was touched by the beauty and loneliness of the place. I was not altogether
pleased, I remember, to recognize this slight change in him, and instead of
immediat