But it seemed to me that a bough of a tree would be a most uneasy resting-place; I should assuredly lose my balance and topple to the ground, though Billy, being accustomed to dizzy perches in the rigging of the _Lovey Susan_, might find it comfortable enough. Yet I had no mind for a lodging on the ground, without any defence from rats, to say nothing of wild animals, of which there might be some on the island, though we had not seen any. We talked about it for some time, and the end of it was that we set about collecting some broken branches that lay on the ground, and snapped off others that were within our reach, and so piled up a little shelter round about a thick trunk. By the time we had finished this work it was perfectly dark within the wood. We sat ourselves down on the mossy carpet, with our cudgels close to our hands, and then, bethinking us of the custom of setting watches on board ship, we determined that one of us should watch while the other slept. Being the older, I took the first watch, and Billy was soon fast asleep, and I sat very melancholy by him, thinking of our lonely situation, and of my good uncle and aunt at home, whose thoughts were, I doubt not, fondly busy about me. There was no way whereby I might tell the time, and it might have been two hours or three had passed when, feeling my head very heavy, I waked Billy and told him to take his turn, which he did very willingly, though he rubbed his eyes and yawned in the manner of one who has not had his sleep out. In the midst of my slumber I was wakened by Billy grasping my arm, and when I sat up, he whispered to me, as if greatly affrighted, to listen. Since I heard nothing but the rustling of the wind in the trees, it having got up while I slept, I thought that Billy must have fallen into a doze and been visited by a nightmare. But all at once there came a strange howling sound, that seemed to be near at hand, and then it went into the distance, at one moment being quite low and soft, the next very loud, though it never altered in pitch. We clutched our cudgels and sat very close to each other, and Billy whispered that he felt a cold shiver running down his back, as I myself did, but I forbore to tell him so. The sound was very dreadful, as of some creature in agony, though it was not the least like any sound I had ever heard before, except once, when I heard a man tuning, as they say, the organ in our parish church; and falling upon our ears in pitchy darkness it made us very uneasy, as you may think. We were too much affrighted to rise and seek for the cause of it, even if it had been possible to find it in the dark; and so we listened to it, huddled thus together, for a very long time, as it seemed, until, being quite overcome with fatigue, we both fell asleep, and so remained until morning light without keeping any guard. [Sidenote: Wild Dogs]