Inasmuch as my log was steady, I sat down as comfortably as possible. Soaked through as I was, I paid no attention to the drenching shower which continued. It was warm enough, and while it could hardly be pleasant, when thus continued such a time, I felt as if it were less than trifling, after all I had recently undergone. Naturally enough the shore had no immediate attractions which would tend to make me wish to paddle in. From the sound of my stream, tumbling noisily into the lake, I concluded the log could not be drifting to any considerable extent. I would wait for the light to come before I moved. One usually feels entitled to suppose that a thunder-shower is fleeting, here one minute and gone the next, but I was in for a disappointment. Though the wind had ceased to blow, the lowering clouds continued rank with rain and apparently as dense as lead. The darkness of the storm continued till the margin between day and night was passed. I realised at last that there would be no light till dawn. “What shall I do?” I muttered aloud, but I knew as I spoke that I would sit all night on that floating log, wet, somewhat chilled and ravenously hungry, to say no word of being alone and lost. The prospect was not exactly bright, but I felt so grateful for my miraculous escape, and so much more content to be on the water than alone again for a night in the jungle, that I entertained no fears for present or future. I tried to think of any duties I owed to myself, which I ought in reason to perform, and then the obvious impossibility of doing anything at all made me smile. It was still early evening when the rain ceased to fall. I laid out full length on the log, to see if I thought it safe as a position in which to sleep. It served to ease my joints directly, though I found it as a bed rather hard and lumpy. Sleep being about the last thing possible, I remained on my side, gazing absently at nothing, engaged in reviewing my own mental panorama of events. From time to time I dabbled my hand in the water, as I always had done when in a boat as a child. I was not so peaceful as this apparent mood of dalliance might imply, for my brain was painfully alert, both on the things already done since my memorable ballooning trip with Ford, and concerning what would happen on the morrow and the days, weeks and months to come. In the midst of this business something gently “nosed” my fingers in the water. I jerked them away quickly enough to have startled anything alive out of all its wits, but nothing dived or swam away in alarm, so that after a minute I put my hand downward again and felt it come in contact with something which was touching against the log. Exultantly then I grasped this something and pulled it aboard. It was simply my bow, which had floated down the stream, when I lost it by striking in the water, and which had drifted in the only current there was. In this current, of course, the log was also drifting, hence the coming together.