But it was the 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 date, 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.


It was my firm intention to lie awake all night and watch, but the
exhaustion of nerves and body decreed otherwise, and sleep after a
while came over me with a welcome blanket of oblivion. The fact that my
companion also slept quickened its approach. At first he fidgeted and
constantly sat up, asking me if I “heard this” or “heard that.” He
tossed about on his cork mattress, and said the tent was moving and the
river had risen over the point of the island, but each time I went out
to look I returned with the report that all was well, and finally he
grew calmer and lay still. Then at length his breathing became regular
and I heard unmistakable sounds of snoring—the first and only time in
my life when snoring has been a welcome and calming influence. This, I remember, was the last thought in my mind before dozing off. A difficulty in breathing woke me, and I found the blanket over my
face. But something else besides the blanket was pressing upon me, and
my first thought was that my companion had rolled off his mattress on
to my own in his sleep. I called to him and sat up, and at the same
moment it came to me that the tent was _surrounded_. That sound of
multitudinous soft pattering was again audible outside, filling the
night with horror. I called again to him, louder than before. He did not answer, but I
missed the sound of his snoring, and also noticed that the flap of the
tent was down. This was the unpardonable sin. I crawled out in the
darkness to hook it back securely, and it was then for the first time I
realized positively that the Swede was not here. He had gone. I dashed out in a mad run, seized by a dreadful agitation, and the
moment I was out I plunged into a sort of torrent of humming that
surrounded me completely and came out of every quarter of the heavens
at once. It was that same familiar humming—gone mad! A swarm of great
invisible bees might have been about me in the air. The sound seemed to
thicken the very atmosphere, and I felt that my lungs worked with
difficulty. But my friend was in danger, and I could not hesitate. The dawn was just about to break, and a faint whitish light spread
upwards over the clouds from a thin strip of clear horizon. No wind
stirred. I could just make out the bushes and river beyond, and the
pale sandy patches. In my excitement I ran frantically to and fro about
the island, calling him by name, shouting at the top of my voice the
first words that came into my head. But the willows smothered my voice,
and the humming muffled it, so that the sound only traveled a few feet
round me. I plunged among the bushes, tripping headlong, tumbling over
roots, and scraping my face as I tore this way and that among the
preventing branches. Then, quite unexpectedly, I came out upon the island’s point and saw a
dark figure outlined between the water and the sky. It was the Swede. And already he had one foot in the river! A moment more and he would
have taken the plunge. I threw myself upon him, flinging my arms about his waist and dragging
him shorewards with all my strength. Of course he struggled furiously,
making a noise all the time just like that cursed humming, and using
the most outlandish phrases in his anger about “going _inside_ to
Them,” and “taking the way of the water and the wind,” and God only
knows what more besides, that I tried in vain to recall afterwards, but
which turned me sick with horror and amazement as I listened. But in
the end I managed to get him into the comparative safety of the tent,
and flung him breathless and cursing upon the mattress where I held him
until the fit had passed. I think the suddenness with which it all went and he grew calm,
coinciding as it did with the equally abrupt cessation of the humming
and pattering outside—I think this was almost the strangest part of the
whole business perhaps. For he had just opened his eyes and turned his
tired face up to me so that the dawn threw a pale light upon it through
the doorway, and said, for all the world just like a frightened child:

“My life, old man—it’s my life I owe you. But it’s all over now anyhow. They’ve found a victim in our place!”

Then he dropped back upon his blankets and went to sleep literally
under my eyes. He simply collapsed, and began to snore again as
healthily as though nothing had happened and he had never tried to
offer his own life as a sacrifice by drowning.