same time to make a forced draught. We took it in turn to make foraging
expeditions into the darkness, and the quantity the Swede brought back
always made me feel that he took an absurdly long time finding it; for
the fact was I did not care much about being left alone, and yet it
always seemed to be my turn to grub about among the bushes or scramble
along the slippery banks in the moonlight. The long day's battle with
wind and water--such wind and such water!--had tired us both, and an
early bed was the obvious program. Yet neither of us made the move for
the tent. We lay there, tending the fire, talking in desultory fashion,
peering about us into the dense willow bushes, and listening to the
thunder of wind and river. The loneliness of the place had entered our
very bones, and silence seemed natural, for after a bit the sound of our
voices became a trifle unreal and forced; whispering would have been the
fitting mode of communication, I felt, and the human voice, always
rather absurd amid the roar of the elements, now carried with it
something almost illegitimate. It was like talking out loud in church,
or in some place where it was not lawful, perhaps not quite _safe_, to
be overheard.

The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million willows, swept
by a hurricane, and surrounded by hurrying deep waters, touched us both,
I fancy. Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there beneath
the moon, remote from human influence, on the frontier of another world,
an alien world, a world tenanted by willows only and the souls of
willows. And we, in our rashness, had dared to invade it, even to make
use of it! Something more than the power of its mystery stirred in me as
I lay on the sand, feet to fire, and peered up through the leaves at the
stars. For the last time I rose to get firewood.

"When this has burnt up," I said firmly, "I shall turn in," and my