with the next
gust and crush us, and meanwhile its leaves brushed and tapped upon the
tight canvas surface of the tent. I raised the loose flap and rushed
out, calling to the Swede to follow.

But when I got out and stood upright I saw that the tent was free. There
was no hanging bough; there was no rain or spray; nothing approached.

A cold, gray light filtered down through the bushes and lay on the
faintly gleaming sand. Stars still crowded the sky directly overhead,
and the wind howled magnificently, but the fire no longer gave out any
glow, and I saw the east reddening in streaks through the trees. Several
hours must have passed since I stood there before, 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 evidences 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 beating upon the loose, hot sand, driving
the dry particles smartly