ore watching the ascending figures, and the
memory of it now came back to me horribly, like an evil dream. Oh, how
tired it made me feel, that ceaseless raging wind! Yet, though the deep
lassitude of a sleepless night was on me, my nerves were tingling with the
activity of an equally tireless apprehension, and all idea of repose was
out of the question. The river I saw had risen further. Its thunder filled
the air, and a fine spray made itself felt through my thin sleeping shirt.

Yet nowhere did I discover the slightest evidence of anything to cause
alarm. This deep, prolonged disturbance in my heart remained wholly
unaccounted for.

My companion had not stirred when I called him, and there was no need to
waken him now. I looked about me carefully, noting everything; the
turned-over canoe; the yellow paddles--two of them, I'm certain; the
provision sack and the extra lantern hanging together from the tree; and,
crowding everywhere about me, enveloping all, the willows, those endless,
shaking willows. A bird uttered its morning cry, and a string of duck
passed with whirring flight overhead in the twilight. The sand whirled, dry
and stinging, about my bare feet in the wind.

I walked round the tent and then went out a little way into the bush, so
that I could see across the river to the farther landscape, and the same
profound yet indefinable emotion of distress seized upon me again as I saw
the interminable sea of bushes stretching to the horizon, looking ghostly
and unreal in the wan light of dawn. I walked softly here and there, still
puzzling over that odd sound of infinite pattering, and of that pressure
upon the tent that had wakened me. It must have been the wind, I
reflected--the wind bearing upon the loose, hot sand, driving the dry
particles smartly against the taut canvas--the wind dropping heavily upon
our fragile roof.

Yet all the time my nervousness and malaise increased appreciably.

I crossed over to the farther shore and noted how the coast-line had
altered in the night, and what masses of sand the river had torn away. I
dipped my hands and feet into the cool current, and bathed my forehead.
Already there was a glow of sunrise in the sky and the exquisite freshness
of coming day. On my way back I passed purposely beneath the very bushes
where I had seen the column of figures rising into the air, and midway
among the clumps I suddenly found myself overtaken by a sense of vast
terror. From the shadows