The hours dragged after one another, one by one, but Shif’less Sol was not unhappy.  He was really quite willing to keep the watch, and, as Tom Ross had done, he regarded his sleeping comrades with pride, and all the warmth of good fellowship.

The night was dark, like its predecessor.  The moon’s rays fell only in uneven streaks, and revealed a singular scene, a forest standing knee deep, as it were, in water.

Shif’less Sol presently took one of the blankets and wrapped it around his shoulders.  A cold damp pervaded the atmosphere, and a fog began to rise from the river.  The shiftless one was a cautious man and he knew the danger of chills and fever.  His comrades were already well wrapped, but he stepped softly over and drew Paul’s blanket a little closer around his neck.  Then he resumed his seat, maintaining his silence.

Shif’less Sol did not like the rising of the river fog.  It was thick and cold, it might be unhealthy, and it hid the view.  His circle of vision steadily narrowed.  Tree trunks became ghostly, and then were gone.  The water, seen through the fog, had a pallid, unpleasant color.  Eye became of little use, and it was ear upon which the sentinel must depend.

Shif’less Sol judged that it was about midnight, and he became troubled.  The sixth sense, that comes of acute natural perceptions fortified by long habit, was giving him warning.  It seemed to him that he felt the approach of something.  He raised himself up a little higher and stared anxiously into the thick mass of white fog.  He could make out nothing but a little patch of water and a few ghostly tree trunks near by.  Even the stern of the boat was half hidden by the fog.

“Wa’al,” thought the shiftless one philosophically, “ef it’s hard fur me to find anything it’ll be hard fur anything to find us.”

But his troubled mind would not be quiet.  Philosophy was not a sufficient reply to the warning of the sixth sense, and, leaning far over the edge of the boat, he listened with ears long trained to every sound of the wilderness.  He heard only the stray murmur of the wind among the leaves—­and was that a ripple in the water?  He strained his ears and decided that it was either a ripple or the splash of a fish, and he sank back again in his seat.

Although he had resumed his old position, the shiftless one was not satisfied.  The feeling of apprehension, like a mysterious mental signal, was not effaced.  That thick, whitish fog was surcharged with an alien quality, and slowly he raised himself up once more.  Hark! was it the ripple again?  He rose half to his feet, and instantly his eye caught a glimpse of something brown upon the edge of the boat.  It was a human hand, the brown, powerful hand of a savage.

The glance of Shif’less Sol followed the hand and saw a brown face emerging from the water and fog.  Quick as a flash he fired.  There was a terrible, unearthly cry, the hand slipped from the boat and the head sank from view.