Page:Oswald Bastable and Others - Nesbit.djvu/65

Rh Indian planters, or any loose-clothed characters. Then we got into bed, and then we got into sleep.

Little did the unconscious sleepers reck of the strange destiny that was advancing on them by leaps and bounds through the silent watches of the night.

Although we were asleep, the rain went on raining just the same, and the wind blowing across the marsh with the fury of a maniac who has been transformed into a blacksmith's bellows. And through the night, and the wind, and the rain, our dreadful destiny drew nearer and nearer. I wish this to sound as if something was going to happen, and I hope it does. I hope the reader's heart is now standing still with apprehensionness on our account, but I do not want it to stop altogether, so I will tell you that we were not all going to be murdered in our beds, or pass peacefully away in our sleeps with angel-like smiles on our young and beautiful faces. Not at all. What really happened was this. Some time must have elapsed between our closing our eyes in serene slumber and the following narrative:

Oswald was awakened by Dicky thumping him hard in the back, and saying in accents of