noon
And did not those very theorems , when carried out to their strict and completing results by the close reasonings of Hume , resolve my own living identity , the one conscious indivisible me , into a bundle of memories derived from the senses which had bubbled and duped my experience , and reduce into a phantom , as spectral as that of the Luminous Shadow , the whole solid frame of creation ? While pondering these questions , the storm whose forewarnings I had neglected to heed burst forth with all the suddenness peculiar to the Australian climes . The rains descended like the rushing of floods . In the beds of watercourses , which , at noon , seemed dried up and exhausted , the torrents began to swell and to rave ; the gray crags around them were animated into living waterfalls . I looked round , and the landscape was as changed as a scene that replaces a scene on the player 's stage . I was aware that I had wandered far from my home , and I knew not what direction I should take to regain it . Close at hand , and raised above the torrents that now rushed in many a gully and tributary creek , around and before me , the mouth of a deep cave , overgrown with bushes and creeping flowers tossed wildly to and fro between the rain from above and the spray of cascades below , offered a shelter from the storm .