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.