Henry could not remember in his experience a more desolate night.

It seemed that the whole world dwelt in perpetual darkness, and that he was the only living being on it.
Yet within the four or five feet square of the hut it was warm and bright, and he was not unhappy.
He would forget the pangs of hunger, and, wrapping himself in the dry blanket, he lay down before the bed of coals, having first raked ashes over them, and he slept one of the soundest sleeps of his life.

All night long, the dull cold rain fell, and with it, at intervals, came gusts of hail that rattled like bird shot on the bark walls of the hut.
Some of the white pellets blew in at the door, and lay for a moment or two on the floor, then melted in the glow of the fire, and were gone.
But neither wind, rain nor hail awoke Henry.

He was as safe, for the time, in the hut on the islet, as if he were in the fort at Pittsburgh or behind the palisades at Wareville.

Dawn came, the sky still heavy and dark with clouds, and the rain still falling.
Henry, after his first sense of refreshment and pleasure, became conscious of a fierce hunger that no amount of the will could now keep quiet.