I accounted for this, at the time, by attributing it in part to the peculiar electrical condition of the atmosphere, and partly to the fact that we had all been wrought up to a condition of high nervous tension by the conviction that something--we did not quite know what--was impending, for which we were all anxiously on the watch, and that, in the Cimmerian darkness which enveloped us, we were obliged to depend for adequate warning, upon our hearing alone, which caused us to resent and be impatient of all extraneous sounds.
