The sand was curiously crisp under their feet as they walked, and the crystallized surface crackled as if they were stepping on thin, dry toast. By and by they stood still on the summit of a dune, and Maïeddine took from the hood of his burnous a pair of field-glasses of the most modern make.
"Look round thee," he said. "I have had these with me since our start, but I saved them for to-day, to give thee a surprise."
Victoria adjusted the glasses, which were very powerful, and cried out at what she saw. The turmoil of the dunes became a battle of giants. Sand waves as high as the sky rushed suddenly towards her, towering far above her head, as if she were a fly in the midst of a stormy ocean. The monstrous yellow shapes came closing in from all sides, threatening to engulf her. She felt like a butterfly in a cage of angry lions.
"It is terrible!" she exclaimed, letting the glasses fall from her eyes. The cageful of lions sat down, calmed, but now that the butterfly had seen them roused, never could they look the same again.
The effect upon the girl was exactly what Maïeddine had wanted. For once Victoria acted as he expected her to do in given circumstances. "She is only a woman after all," he thought.
"If thou wert alone in this sea of gold, abandoned, to find thine own way, with no guide but the stars, then indeed thou mightst say 'it is terrible,'" he answered. "For these waves roll between thee and the north, whence thou hast come, and still higher between thee and the desired end of thy journey. So high are they, that to go up and down is like climbing and descending mountains, one after another, all day, day after day. And beyond, where thou must soon go if thou art to find thy sister, there are no tracks such as those we have followed thus far. In these shifting sands, not only men and camels, but great caravans, and even whole armies have been lost and swallowed up for ever. For gravestones, they have only the dunes, and no man will know where they lie till the world is rolled up as a scroll in the hand of Allah."
Victoria grew pale.
"Always before thou hast tried to make me love the desert," she said, slowly. "If there were anything ugly to see, thou hast bidden me turn my head the other way, or if I saw something dreadful thou wouldst at once begin to chant a song of happiness, to make me forget. Why dost thou wish to frighten me now?"
"It is not that I mean to give thee pain, Ourïeda." Maïeddine's voice changed to a tone that was gentle and pleading. "It is only that I would have thee see how powerless thou wouldst be alone among the dunes, where for days thou mightst wander, meeting no man. Or if thou hadst any encounter, it might be with a Touareg, masked in blue, with a long knife at his belt, and in his breast a heart colder than steel."
"I see well enough that I would be powerless alone," Victoria repeated. "Dost thou need to tell me that?"