No light made its way into the cone through the lower orifice.

Rumblings, rendered low by the thickness of the walls, indicated that the storm still raged.

Listening, Dick Sand also heard the rain falling with violence at the base of the ant-hill.

As the large drops no longer struck a hard soil, he must conclude that the whole plain was inundated.
It must have been about eleven o'clock.

Dick Sand then felt that a kind of torpor, if not a true sleep, was going to overcome him.