the gurgling
of the river and the humming in the air overhead.

We both missed, I think, the shouting company of the winds.

At length, at a moment when a stray puff prolonged itself as though the
wind were about to rise again, I reached the point for me of saturation,
the point where it was absolutely necessary to find relief in plain
speech, or else to betray myself by some hysterical extravagance that
must have been far worse in its effect upon both of us. I kicked the
fire into a blaze, and turned to my companion abruptly. He looked up
with a start.

"I can't disguise it any longer," I said; "I don't like this place, and
the darkness, and the noises, and the awful feelings I get. There's
something here that beats me utterly. I'm in a blue funk, and that's the
plain truth. If the other shore was--different, I swear I'd be inclined
to swim for it!"

The Swede's face turned very white beneath the deep tan of sun and wind.
He stared straight at me and answered quietly, but his voice betrayed
his huge excitement by its unnatural calmness. For the moment, at any
rate, he was the strong man of the two. He was more phlegmatic, for one
thing.

"It's not a physical condition we can escape from by running away," he
replied, in the tone of a doctor diagnosing some grave disease; "we must
sit tight and wait. There are forces close here that could kill a herd
of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly. Our
only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps may
save us."

I put a dozen questions into my expression of face, but found no words.
It was precisely like listening to an accurate description of a disease
whose symptoms had puzzled me.

"I mean that so far, although aware of our disturbing presence, they
have not _found_ us--not 'located' us, as the Americans say," he went
on. "They're blundering about like men hunting for a leak of gas. The
paddle and canoe and provisions prove that. I think they _feel_ us, but
cannot actually see us. We must keep our minds quiet--it's our minds
they feel. We must control our thoughts, or it's all up with us."

"Death you mean?" I stammered, icy with the horror of his suggestion.

"Worse--by far," he said. "Death, according to one's belief, means
either annihilation or release from the limitations of the senses, but
it involves no change of character. _You_ don't suddenly alter just
because the body's gone. But this means a radical altera