“Will you come with me for another five days, Mark? and I promise you that if at the end of that time we have found no further traces that we are on the right track, I will accompany you back to Wady-Halfa. We can be a little more economical with our provisions and make them last out a few days longer than we had intended.”
Strangely enough, with the dismal advent of the birds of prey, my enthusiasm seemed to have revived. I think it must have been owing to the sound of other life than ours, through the terrible, unvarying silence. Hugh’s promise also comforted me, and for the next three days I delighted him with my reawakened spirits.
One morning, at break of day, as we were loading the camels, Hugh pointed westward.
“The enemy at last, Mark. It is no use attempting to make a start; he will overtake us before we are well on our way. I have been wondering how it was that he has avoided us all this while.”
I had read a great deal about sandstorms, and had, when we first started, spoken about the chances of our meeting with one with perfect equanimity. We made what preparations were necessary to meet the enemy: the camels, poor things, were trembling from head to foot. We spread the canvas of our tent right over them and us, and our heads well protected with cloaks and rugs, we could but wait and trust our lives to a higher keeping.
The experience was a terrible one, one that made me forget my ennui and Hugh his visionary dreams. The stunning blows from sand and shingle, the darkness, the fright of the camels, the suffocation, all helped to make me long for that monotony of calm desert sand which I had railed against for so many days.
I think I must have been hit on the back of the head by some sharp loose stone, for I can remember the sensation of a terrible blow and then nothing more. When I recovered consciousness it was with the sensation of brandy trickling down my throat, of an even blue sky above me, and of Hugh’s cheerful voice asking me how I felt.
“Just like one gigantic and collapsed sand dune,” I murmured.
Indeed it seemed to me as if it ought to be impossible for any one human being to hold as much sand about their person as I did. It was absolutely everywhere: in my mouth, in my eyes, in the brandy which I drank, at the back of my throat, in my shoes, and under the roots of my hair.
“How are the camels?” I asked.