midnight
The light canoe did not move beneath his weight the fraction of an inch . His upturned eyes saw the little cubes of sky that showed through the leaves grow darker and darker . The bushes about him were now bending before the wind , which blew steadily from the south , and presently drops of rain began to fall lightly on the water . The boy , alone in the midst of all that vast wilderness , surrounded by danger in its most cruel forms , and with a black midnight sky above him , felt neither fear nor awe . Being what nature and circumstance had made him , he was conscious , instead , of a deep sense of peace and comfort . He was at ease , in a nest for the night , and there was only the remotest possibility that the prying eye of an enemy would see him . The leaves directly over his head were so thick that they formed a canopy , and , as he heard the drops fall upon them , it was like the rain on a roof , that soothes the one beneath its shelter .