A cold, gray light filtered down through the bushes and lay on the faintly gleaming sand.  Stars still crowded the sky directly overhead, and the wind howled magnificently, but the fire no longer gave out any glow, and I saw the east reddening in streaks through the trees.  Several hours must have passed since I stood there before, watching the ascending figures, and the memory of it now came back to me horribly, like an evil dream.  Oh, how tired it made me feel, that ceaseless raging wind!  Yet, though the deep lassitude of a sleepless night was on me, my nerves were tingling with the 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 evidences 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 beating 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.

I crossed over to the farther shore and noted how the coast line had altered in the night, and what masses of sand the river had torn away.  I dipped my hands and feet into the cool current, and bathed my forehead.  Already there was a glow of sunrise in the sky and the exquisite freshness of coming day.  On my way back I passed purposely beneath the very bushes where I had seen the column of figures rising into the air, and midway among the clumps I suddenly found myself overtaken by a sense of vast terror.  From the shadows a large figure went swiftly by.  Some one passed me, as sure as ever man did....