An acute spasm of pain passed through me, and I was aware that the Swede had hold of me in such a way that he hurt me abominably.  It was the way he caught at me in falling.

But it was this pain, he declared afterwards, that saved me:  it caused me to forget them and think of something else at the very instant when they were about to find me.  It concealed my mind from them at the moment of discovery, yet just in time to evade their terrible seizing of me.  He himself, he says, actually swooned at the same moment, and that was what saved him.

I only know that at a later time, how long or short is impossible to say, I found myself scrambling up out of the slippery network of willow branches, and saw my companion standing in front of me holding out a hand to assist me.  I stared at him in a dazed way, rubbing the arm he had twisted for me.  Nothing came to me to say, somehow.

“I lost consciousness for a moment or two,” I heard him say.  “That’s what saved me.  It made me stop thinking about them.”

“You nearly broke my arm in two,” I said, uttering my only connected thought at the moment.  A numbness came over me.

“That’s what saved you!” he replied.  “Between us, we’ve managed to set them off on a false tack somewhere.  The humming has ceased.  It’s gone—­for the moment at any rate!”

A wave of hysterical laughter seized me again, and this time spread to my friend too—­great healing gusts of shaking laughter that brought a tremendous sense of relief in their train.  We made our way back to the fire and put the wood on so that it blazed at once.  Then we saw that the tent had fallen over and lay in a tangled heap upon the ground.

We picked it up, and during the process tripped more than once and caught our feet in sand.

“It’s those sand-funnels,” exclaimed the Swede, when the tent was up again and the firelight lit up the ground for several yards about us.  “And look at the size of them!”

All round the tent and about the fireplace where we had seen the moving shadows there were deep funnel-shaped hollows in the sand, exactly similar to the ones we had already found over the island, only far bigger and deeper, beautifully formed, and wide enough in some instances to admit the whole of my foot and leg.

Neither of us said a word.  We both knew that sleep was the safest thing we could do, and to bed we went accordingly without further delay, having first thrown sand on the fire and taken the provision sack and the paddle inside the tent with us.  The canoe, too, we propped in such a way at the end of the tent that our feet touched it, and the least motion would disturb and wake us.

In case of emergency, too, we again went to bed in our clothes, ready for a sudden start.

V