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 a 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. A cold, grey 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 evidence 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 bearing 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. Someone passed me, as sure as ever man did…. It was a great staggering blow from the wind that helped me forward
again, and once out in the more open space, the sense of terror
diminished strangely. The winds were about and walking, I remember
saying to myself, for the winds often move like great presences under
the trees. And altogether the fear that hovered about me was such an
unknown and immense kind of fear, so unlike anything I had ever felt
before, that it woke a sense of awe and wonder in me that did much to
counteract its worst effects; and when I reached a high point in the
middle of the island from which I could see the wide stretch of river,
crimson in the sunrise, the whole magical beauty of it all was so
overpowering that a sort of wild yearning woke in me and almost brought
a cry up into the throat. But this cry found no expression, for as my eyes wandered from the
plain beyond to the island round me and noted our little tent half
hidden among the willows, a dreadful discovery leaped out at me,
compared to which my terror of the walking winds seemed as nothing at
all. For a change, I thought, had somehow come about in the arrangement of
the landscape. It was not that my point of vantage gave me a different
view, but that an alteration had apparently been effected in the
relation of the tent to the willows, and of the willows to the tent. Surely the bushes now crowded much closer—unnecessarily, unpleasantly
close. _They had moved nearer._

Creeping with silent feet over the shifting sands, drawing
imperceptibly nearer by soft, unhurried movements, the willows had come
closer during the night. But had the wind moved them, or had they moved
of themselves? I recalled the sound of infinite small patterings and
the pressure upon the tent and upon my own heart that caused me to wake
in terror. I swayed for a moment in the wind like a tree, finding it
hard to keep my upright position on the sandy hillock. There was a
suggestion here of personal agency, of deliberate intention, of
aggressive hostility, and it terrified me into a sort of rigidity. Then the reaction followed quickly. The idea was so bizarre, so absurd,
that I felt inclined to laugh.