The moon at length coming up
behind the clouds lent a spectral aspect to the forest, and deceived
us
For a time into the notion that day was at hand; but the rain
never ceased, and we lay wishful and waiting, with no item of solid
misery wanting that we could conceive.
Day was slow a-coming, and didn't amount to much when it came, so
heavy were the clouds; but the rain slackened. We crawled out of our
water-cure "pack," and sought the guide. To our infinite relief he
announced himself not only alive, but in a going condition. I looked
at my watch. It had stopped at five o'clock. I poured the water out
of it, and shook it; but, not being constructed on the hydraulic
principle, it refused to go. Some hours later we encountered a
huntsman, from whom I procured some gun-grease; with this I filled
the watch, and heated it in by the fire. This is a most effectual
way of treating a delicate Genevan timepiece.
The light disclosed fully the suspected fact that our bed had been
made in a slight depression: the under rubber blanket spread in this
had prevented the rain from soaking into the ground, and we had been
lying in what was in fact a well-contrived bathtub. While Old Phelps
was pulling himself together, and we were wringing some gallons of
water out of our blankets, we questioned the old man about the
"squawk," and what bird was possessed of such a voice.
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