the way of the water and the wind," and God only knows what more besides,
that I tried in vain to recall afterwards, but which turned me sick with
horror and amazement as I listened. But in the end I managed to get him
into the comparative safety of the tent, and flung him breathless and
cursing upon the mattress where I held him until the fit had passed.

I think the suddenness with which it all went and he grew calm, coinciding
as it did with the equally abrupt cessation of the humming and pattering
outside--I think this was almost the strangest part of the whole business
perhaps. For he had just opened his eyes and turned his tired face up to me
so that the dawn threw a pale light upon it through the doorway, and said,
for all the world just like a frightened child:

"My life, old man--it's my life I owe you. But it's all over now anyhow.
They've found a victim in our place!"

Then he dropped back upon his blankets and went to sleep literally under my
eyes. He simply collapsed, and began to snore again as healthily as though
nothing had happened and he had never tried to offer his own life as a
sacrifice by drowning. And when the sunlight woke him three hours
later--hours of ceaseless vigil for me--it became so clear to me that he
remembered absolutely nothing of what he had attempted to do, that I deemed
it wise to hold my peace and ask no dangerous questions.

He woke naturally and easily, as I have said, when the sun was already high
in a windless hot sky, and he at once got up and set about the preparation
of the fire for breakfast. I followed him anxiously at bathing, but he did
not attempt to plunge in, merely dipping his head and making some remark
about the extra coldness of the water.