In the Musgrave Ranges

by Conrad H. Sayce

Vaughan drank his water and lay down under the shelter. Sax did not screw the top on the canteen for a moment, intending to pour a few drops back again when he had finished. He held his hand over the hole in the canteen and started to drink from his pannikin.

Suddenly the storm burst on them. Sax heard a terrific rushing sound and looked round quickly. He was at once blinded as completely as if an actual thick brown curtain had been blown around his head. At the same time, some tremendous force caught him, nearly lifted him off the ground, and threw him down sprawling on the sand several yards away. The pannikin was wrenched from his hand, and the canteen—what of the canteen?

Sax lay stunned for a moment, and then his first and only thought was the canteen. He tried to crawl, but every effort on his part only gave the enormous pressure of wind opportunity to drive him back, for as soon as he lifted his head, it was caught and twisted as if some soft strangling folds of cloth were being pulled around it from behind.

The light of the sun was blotted out completely, and it was as dark as a starless midnight. A screaming sound filled the boy's ears: the yelling of the storm, the laughter of the furies, the shrill shouts of fiends. He had to shield his mouth in order to breathe, and even then a fine dust choked his throat, and he would have coughed and vomited up his very life if he had not turned his back to the storm. Enormous quantities of sand were crowding the gale.

Have you ever stood under a waterfall and let a solid column of water fall on you from a height? You can stand there only for a moment, because the power of even a liquid is greater than the strength of man. But here, in the desert, three exhausted men were fighting for their lives with sand; sand, as solid as it could possibly be without being actually fixed; sand, as hard as it could possibly be, and yet be driven by the wind. The electric gale of wind had scooped the surface off a thousand miles of desert, and was flinging it at three puny human beings.

It was impossible to face the onslaught. Sax turned against the storm and tried to crawl backwards. At all costs he must find the canteen. He had no thought but this: the canteen! the canteen! Three lives depended on those drops of precious liquid. Were they safe? He crawled backwards inch by inch. But he had lost all sense of direction. The stinging, stifling sand, the shrill-screaming wind, the pitch-black whirling darkness; how could a man possibly tell where he was going?

Stobart's senses were all numb with the buffeting of the storm, but he suddenly felt that one of his legs was being held. He tried to kick free but was pulled backwards, and then something flapped and covered him. There was instant peace. He had found a shelter. Outside this unknown something which covered him the gale raged past in impotent fury. He was safe. An arm gripped his body and held him close.

The sudden reaction from fighting for his life to this secure peace was too much for the overwrought boy. He did not bother to find out who or what had saved him; he sank down, down, down into unconsciousness, and as the peaceful darkness closed over his mind, he muttered the words: "Canteen, canteen, canteen."

No one heard. No one could possibly hear in such a storm, not even the man who was holding him so closely. It was Yarloo. The boy had found his master's son, and had covered his head with a coat, and was now holding the unconscious form in his arms, while Sax drew long, unhindered breaths.

The storm passed. It had come upon them suddenly, and it went away in the same manner. There was very little lessening of its fury to tell of the approaching end, but the air grew lighter all at once, the sounds got fainter quickly, and there was now no longer any stinging sand. The brown curtain passed on, trailing its fringe over the desert, and the back of it could be seen as distinctly as the front had been a short half-hour before.