As I said before, my condition was evidently an abnormal one.  The capacity for feeling surprise seemed, as in dreams, to be wholly absent.  My senses recorded with unusual accuracy every smallest occurrence, but I was able to draw only the simplest deductions.

The Indians soon reached the top of the stairs, and there they halted for a moment.  I had not the faintest clue as to their next movement.  They appeared to hesitate.  They were listening attentively.  Then I heard one of them, who by the weight of his soft tread must have been the giant, cross the narrow corridor and enter the room directly overhead—­my own little bedroom.  But for the insistence of that unaccountable dread I had experienced there in the morning, I should at that very moment have been lying in the bed with the big Indian in the room standing beside me.

For the space of a hundred seconds there was silence, such as might have existed before the birth of sound.  It was followed by a long quivering shriek of terror, which rang out into the night, and ended in a short gulp before it had run its full course.  At the same moment the other Indian left his place at the head of the stairs, and joined his companion in the bedroom.  I heard the “thing” trailing behind him along the floor.  A thud followed, as of something heavy falling, and then all became as still and silent as before.

It was at this point that the atmosphere, surcharged all day with the electricity of a fierce storm, found relief in a dancing flash of brilliant lightning simultaneously with a crash of loudest thunder.  For five seconds every article in the room was visible to me with amazing distinctness, and through the windows I saw the tree trunks standing in solemn rows.  The thunder pealed and echoed across the lake and among the distant islands, and the flood-gates of heaven then opened and let out their rain in streaming torrents.

The drops fell with a swift rushing sound upon the still waters of the lake, which leaped up to meet them, and pattered with the rattle of shot on the leaves of the maples and the roof of the cottage.  A moment later, and another flash, even more brilliant and of longer duration than the first, lit up the sky from zenith to horizon, and bathed the room momentarily in dazzling whiteness.  I could see the rain glistening on the leaves and branches outside.  The wind rose suddenly, and in less than a minute the storm that had been gathering all day burst forth in its full fury.

Above all the noisy voices of the elements, the slightest sounds in the room overhead made themselves heard, and in the few seconds of deep silence that followed the shriek of terror and pain I was aware that the movements had commenced again.  The men were leaving the room and approaching the top of the stairs.  A short pause, and they began to descend.  Behind them, tumbling from step to step, I could hear that trailing “thing” being dragged along.  It had become ponderous!