CHAPTER IV
THE DEATH WIND
"The fact is," said Higgs presently, speaking with the air of an oracle, "the fact is that all these accursed sand-hills are as like each other as mummy beads on the same necklace, and therefore it is very difficult to know them apart. Give me that water-bottle, Adams; I am as dry as a lime-kiln."
"No," I said shortly; "you may be drier before the end."
"What do you mean? Oh! I see; but that"s nonsense; those Zeus will hunt us up, or, at the worst, we have only to wait till the sun gets out."
As he spoke, suddenly the air became filled with a curious singing sound impossible to describe, caused as I knew, who had often heard it before, by millions and millions of particles of sand being rubbed together. We turned to see whence it came, and perceived, far away, rushing towards us with extraordinary swiftness, a huge and dense cloud preceded by isolated columns and funnels of similar clouds.
"A sand-storm," said Higgs, his florid face paling a little. "Bad luck for us! That"s what comes of getting out of bed the wrong side first this morning. No, it"s your fault, Adams; you helped me to salt last night, in spite of my remonstrances" (the Professor has sundry little superst.i.tions of this sort, particularly absurd in so learned a man).
"Well, what shall we do? Get under the lee of the hill until it blows over?"
"Don"t suppose it will blow over. Can"t see anything to do except say our prayers," remarked Orme with sweet resignation. Oliver is, I think, the coolest hand in an emergency of any one I ever met, except, perhaps, Sergeant Quick, a man, of course, nearly old enough to be his father.
"The game seems to be pretty well up," he added. "Well, you have killed two lions, Higgs, and that is something."
"Oh, hang it! You can die if you like, Oliver. The world won"t miss you; but think of its loss if anything happened to _me_. I don"t intend to be wiped out by a beastly sand-storm. I intend to live to write a book on Mur," and Higgs shook his fist at the advancing clouds with an air that was really n.o.ble. It reminded me of Ajax defying the lightning.
Meanwhile I had been reflecting.
"Listen," I said. "Our only chance is to stop where we are, for if we move we shall certainly be buried alive. Look; there is something solid to lie on," and I pointed to a ridge of rock, a kind of core of congealed sand, from which the surface had been swept by gales. "Down with you, quick," I went on, "and let"s draw that lion-skin over our heads. It may help to keep the dust from choking us. Hurry, men; it"s coming!"
Coming, it was indeed, with a mighty, wailing roar. Scarcely had we got ourselves into position, our backs to the blast and our mouths and noses buried after the fashion of camels in a similar predicament, the lion-skin covering our heads and bodies to the middle, with the paws tucked securely beneath us to prevent it from being blown away, when the storm leaped upon us furiously, bringing darkness in its train. There we lay for hour after hour, unable to see, unable to talk because of the roaring noise about us, and only from time to time lifting ourselves a little upon our hands and knees to disturb the weight of sand that acc.u.mulated on our bodies, lest it should encase us in a living tomb.
Dreadful were the miseries we suffered--the misery of the heat beneath the stinking pelt of the lion, the misery of the dust-laden air that choked us almost to suffocation, the misery of thirst, for we could not get at our scanty supply of water to drink. But worst of all perhaps, was the pain caused by the continual friction of the sharp sand driven along at hurricane speed, which, incredible as it may seem, finally wore holes in our thin clothing and filed our skins to rawness.
"No wonder the Egyptian monuments get such a beautiful shine on them," I heard poor Higgs muttering in my ear again and again, for he was growing light-headed; "no wonder, no wonder! My shin-bones will be very useful to polish Quick"s tall riding-boots. Oh! curse the lions. Why did you help me to salt, you old a.s.s; why did you help me to salt? It"s pickling me behind."
Then he became quite incoherent, and only groaned from time to time.
Perhaps, however, this suffering did us a service, since otherwise exhaustion, thirst, and dust might have overwhelmed our senses, and caused us to fall into a sleep from which we never should have awakened.
Yet at the time we were not grateful to it, for at last the agony became almost unbearable. Indeed, Orme told me afterwards that the last thing he could remember was a quaint fancy that he had made a colossal fortune by selling the secret of a new torture to the Chinese--that of hot sand driven on to the victim by a continuous blast of hot air.
After a while we lost count of time, nor was it until later that we learned that the storm endured for full twenty hours, during the latter part of which, notwithstanding our manifold sufferings, we must have become more or less insensible. At any rate, at one moment I remembered the awful roar and the stinging of the sand whips, followed by a kind of vision of the face of my son--that beloved, long-lost son whom I had sought for so many years, and for whose sake I endured all these things.
Then, without any interval, as it were, I felt my limbs being scorched as though by hot irons or through a burning-gla.s.s, and with a fearful effort staggered up to find that the storm had pa.s.sed, and that the furious sun was blistering my excoriated skin. Rubbing the caked dirt from my eyes, I looked down to see two mounds like those of graves, out of which projected legs that had been white. Just then one pair of legs, the longer pair, stirred, the sand heaved up convulsively, and, uttering wandering words in a choky voice, there arose the figure of Oliver Orme.
For a moment we stood and stared at each other, and strange spectacles we were.
"Is he dead?" muttered Orme, pointing to the still buried Higgs.
"Fear so," I answered, "but we"ll look;" and painfully we began to disinter him.
When we came to it beneath the lion-skin, the Professor"s face was black and hideous to see, but, to our relief, we perceived that he was not dead, for he moved his hand and moaned. Orme looked at me.
"Water would save him," I said.
Then came the anxious moment. One of our water-bottles was emptied before the storm began, but the other, a large, patent flask covered with felt, and having a screw vulcanite top, should still contain a good quant.i.ty, perhaps three quarts--that is, if the fluid had not evaporated in the dreadful heat. If this had happened, it meant that Higgs would die, and unless help came, that soon we should follow him. Orme unscrewed the flask, for my hands refused that office, and used his teeth to draw the cork, which, providentially enough the thoughtful Quick had set in the neck beneath the screw. Some of the water, which, although it was quite hot, had _not_ evaporated, thank G.o.d! flew against his parched lips, and I saw him bite them till the blood came in the fierceness of the temptation to a.s.suage his raging thirst. But he resisted it like the man he is, and, without drinking a drop, handed me the bottle, saying simply:
"You are the oldest; take care of this, Adams."
Now it was my turn to be tempted, but I, too, overcame, and, sitting down, laid Higgs"s head upon my knee; then, drop by drop, let a little of the water trickle between his swollen lips.
The effect was magical, for in less than a minute the Professor sat up, grasped at the flask with both hands, and strove to tear it away.
"You cruel brute! You cruel selfish brute!" he moaned as I wrenched it from him.
"Look here, Higgs," I answered thickly; "Orme and I want water badly enough, and we have had none. But you might take it all if it would save you, only it wouldn"t. We are lost in the desert, and must be sparing.
If you drank everything now, in a few hours you would be thirsty again and die."
He thought awhile, then looked up and said:
"Beg pardon--I understand. I"m the selfish brute. But there"s a good lot of water there; let"s each have a drink; we can"t move unless we do."
So we drank, measuring out the water in a little india-rubber cup which we had with us. It held about as much as a port wine gla.s.s, and each of us drank, or rather slowly sipped, three cupfuls; we who felt as though we could have swallowed a gallon apiece, and asked for more. Small as was the allowance, it worked wonders in us; we were men again.
We stood up and looked about us, but the great storm had changed everything. Where there had been sand-hills a hundred feet high, now were plains and valleys; where there had been valleys appeared sand-hills. Only the high ridge upon which we had lain was as before, because it stood above the others and had a core of rock. We tried to discover the direction of the oasis by the position of the sun, only to be baffled, since our two watches had run down, and we did not know the time of day or where the sun ought to be in the heavens. Also, in that howling wilderness there was nothing to show us the points of the compa.s.s.
Higgs, whose obstinacy remained unimpaired, whatever may have happened to the rest of his vital forces, had one view of the matter, and Orme another diametrically opposed to it. They even argued as to whether the oasis lay to our right or to our left, for their poor heads were so confused that they were scarcely capable of accurate thought or observation. Meanwhile I sat down upon the sand and considered. Through the haze I could see the points of what I thought must be the hills whence the Zeus declared that the lions came, although of course, for aught I knew, they might be other hills.
"Listen," I said; "if lions live upon those hills, there must be water there. Let us try to reach them; perhaps we shall see the oasis as we go."
Then began our dreadful march. The lion-skin that had saved our lives, and was now baked hard as a board, we left behind, but the rifles we took. All day long we dragged ourselves up and down steep sand-slopes, pausing now again to drink a sip of water, and hoping always that from the top of the next slope we should see a rescue party headed by Quick, or perhaps the oasis itself. Indeed, once we did see it, green and shining, not more than three miles away, but when we got to the head of the hill beyond which it should lie we found that the vision was only a mirage, and our hearts nearly broke with disappointment. Oh! to men dying of thirst, that mirage was indeed a cruel mockery.
At length night approached, and the mountains were yet a long way off.
We could march no more, and sank down exhausted, lying on our faces, because our backs were so cut by the driving sand and blistered by the sun that we could not sit. By now almost all our water was gone.
Suddenly Higgs nudged us and pointed upwards. Following the line of his hand, we saw, not thirty yards away and showing clear against the sky, a file of antelopes trekking along the sand-ridge, doubtless on a night journey from one pasturage to another.
"You fellows shoot," he muttered; "I might miss and frighten them away,"
for in his distress poor Higgs was growing modest.
Slowly Orme and I drew ourselves to our knees, c.o.c.king our rifles. By this time all the buck save one had pa.s.sed; there were but six of them, and this one marched along about twenty yards behind the others. Orme pulled the trigger, but his rifle would not go off because, as he discovered afterwards, some sand had worked into the mechanism of the lock.
Meanwhile I had also covered the buck, but the sunset dazzled my weakened eyes, and my arms were feeble; also my terrible anxiety for success, since I knew that on this shot hung our lives, unnerved me. But it must be now or never; in three more paces the beast would be down the dip.
I fired, and knowing that I had missed, turned sick and faint. The antelope bounded forward a few yards right to the edge of the dip; then, never having heard such a sound before, and being overcome by some fatal curiosity, stopped and turned around, staring at the direction whence it had come.
Despairingly I fired again, almost without taking aim, and this time the bullet went in beneath the throat, and, raking the animal, dropped it dead as a stone. We scrambled to it, and presently were engaged in an awful meal of which we never afterwards liked to think. Happily for us that antelope must have drunk water not long before.
Our hunger and thirst a.s.suaged after this horrible fashion, we slept awhile by the carcase, then arose extraordinarily refreshed, and, having cut off some hunks of meat to carry with us, started on again. By the position of the stars, we now knew that the oasis must lie somewhere to the east of us; but as between us and it there appeared to be nothing but these eternal sand-hills stretching away for many miles, and as in front of us toward the range the character of the desert seemed to be changing, we thought it safer, if the word safety can be used in such a connection, to continue to head for that range. All the remainder of this night we marched, and, as we had no fuel wherewith to cook it, at dawn ate some of the raw meat, which we washed down with the last drops of our water.
Now we were out of the sand-hills, and had entered on a great pebbly plain that lay between us and the foot of the mountains. These looked quiet close, but in fact were still far off. Feebly and ever more feebly we staggered on, meeting no one and finding no water, though here and there we came across little bushes, of which we chewed the stringy and aromatic leaves that contained some moisture, but drew up our mouths and throats like alum.
Higgs, who was the softest of us, gave out the first, though to the last he struggled forward with surprising pluck, even after he had been obliged to throw away his rifle, because he could no longer carry it, though this we did not notice at the time. When he could not support himself upon his feet, Orme took him by one arm, and I by the other, and helped him on, much as I have seen two elephants do by a wounded companion of the herd.
Half-an-hour or so later my strength failed me also. Although advanced in years, I am tough and accustomed to the desert and hardships; who would not be who had been a slave to the Khalifa? But now I could do no more, and halting, begged the others to go on and leave me. Orme"s only answer was to proffer me his left arm. I took it, for life is sweet to us all, especially when one has something to live for--a desire to fulfil as I had, though to tell the truth, even at the time I felt ashamed of myself.
Thus, then, we proceeded awhile, resembling a sober man attempting to lead two drunken friends out of reach of that stern policeman, Death.