And, once they were gone and the immediate wonder of their great presence had passed, fear came down upon me with a cold rush.  The esoteric meaning of this lonely and haunted region suddenly flamed up within me and I began to tremble dreadfully.  I took a quick look round—­a look of horror that came near to panic—­calculating vainly ways of escape; and then, realizing how helpless I was to achieve anything really effective, I crept back silently into the tent and lay down again upon my sandy mattress, first lowering the door-curtain to shut out the sight of the willows in the moonlight, and then burying my head as deeply as possible beneath the blankets to deaden the sound of the terrifying wind.

III

As though further to convince me that I had not been dreaming, I remember that it was a long time before I fell again into a troubled and restless sleep; and even then only the upper crust of me slept, and underneath there was something that never quite lost consciousness, but lay alert and on the watch.

But this second time I jumped up with a genuine start of terror.  It was neither the wind nor the river that woke me, but the slow approach of something that caused the sleeping portion of me to grow smaller and smaller till at last it vanished altogether, and I found myself sitting bolt upright—­listening.

Outside there was a sound of multitudinous little patterings.  They had been coming, I was aware, for a long time, and in my sleep they had first become audible.  I sat there nervously wide awake as though I had not slept at all.  It seemed to me that my breathing came with difficulty, and that there was a great weight upon the surface of my body.  In spite of the hot night, I felt clammy with cold and shivered.  Something surely was pressing steadily against the sides of the tent and weighing down upon it from above.  Was it the body of the wind?  Was this the pattering rain, the dripping of the leaves?  The spray blown from the river by the wind and gathering in big drops?  I thought quickly of a dozen things.

Then suddenly the explanation leaped into my mind:  a bough from the poplar, the only large tree on the island, had fallen with the wind.  Still half caught by the other branches, it would fall 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.