In the heat of the still night death seemed all about on every side.
"I am awake and yet asleep. I am the only one who sees. . . ."
The strange thunder kept on and on, now near at hand, now far away, rising and falling in volume.
Again the odd, voluptuous feeling of power lying in his own supple body swept over him. Leaning down he touched Swanson's soft, heavy shoulder. "Swanson," he said, and there was no answer. He shook the man savagely, and Swanson, coming out of a deep sleep, stared up at him.
"Yes, I fell asleep again. . . . I can't help it."
"Listen!" Philip commanded.
After a silence, Swanson said, "It's thunder . . . it's going to rain."
"It's not thunder—look at the sky—what is it? You ought to know."
Swanson was humble with that childlike humbleness that always put Philip to shame, as if he said, "I won't be presumptuous. You're much more clever than I am."
"I don't know," he said; "maybe we'd better ask Naomi."
She wakened quickly, catching at once their vague sense of alarm, for Swanson appeared now to be frightened and uneasy for the first time. She, too, listened and said, "I don't know. I never heard it up North in Pa's country. It sounds like drums—like tom-toms. I've heard that sometimes they signal that-a-away."
The three of them—Philip and Swanson still half-naked (for they had forgotten even decency) and Naomi in a long, shapeless calico nightgown—went out
