t 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.

V

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; 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 door 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 there. 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,