en. At that our
torpor vanished and we made an unceremonious rush for the poor shelter
afforded by the tent, bringing with us what was left of our meal. The
tent had not been constructed with a view to holding more than one; at
its poor best it was but a rough shelter from the night dew. We had
never intended it to keep out the rain; it had not entered our heads as
even a remote possibility. I, perhaps, as the only one of the three who
had had any practical experience of out-door life, should have kept just
such a chance in mind. The fact remains that I overlooked it, and I
can't say that then or at any other time was I sorry for my
miscalculation.

I had lived so long in the tropics that the rain that came seemed to me
the veriest drizzle, but the others had their own opinion, as I learnt
the moment I said what I thought. Cumshaw remarked that it was the devil
of a downpour, and Moira expressed her idea in less forcible though more
polite terms. It was no use my saying that if I were in Port Moresby or
Samarai the rain would have gone through the thin fabric of the tent
like a rifle bullet through butter-cloth. They pointed out with equal
truth that the present rain was dribbling through even as it was, and
that a quarter of an hour more would see us saturated.

Whether we would or not must remain a mystery. No doubt we would have
found out sooner or later had it not come on to blow. The thunder had
ceased and the lightning flashed less frequently, now that the rain had
set in, but the wind began to rise, and almost on the last clap of
thunder I felt the wall of the tent shiver under the impact of the
blast. It occurred to me in one of those flashes of memory that we
sometimes have in moments of tension that we had not troubled about
running up guy-ropes, and there was nothing now to hold the tent if the
wind caught it squarely. Scarcely had the thought formed in my mind than
an extra fierce blast caught the light fabric, shook it as a
Newfoundland dog would shake a small terrier it had picked up in its
mouth, and then, before we knew what had happened, the wind had whirled
the tent away like a child's balloon, leaving us standing bareheaded,
shivering and exposed to all the force of the elements. I left Moira
with Cumshaw and groped about in the darkness, hoping to find our
missing tent, but I might as well have been hunting for the proverbial
needle in a bundle of hay for all the chance I had. I merely got wet
thro