As this cloud advanced, descending to the sands while it rose toward the heavens, it grew more black; and on either side were long columns of seeming vapor rising, and as rapidly disappearing.
Then across the darkness on that portion of the horizon something bright moved swiftly, as if a flash of lightning had passed over the face of the cloud; and in an instant the sun and the sky were shut out from view.
Now the clouds took on the appearance of a dense black fog, coming up from the southward over the desert, until Dick was seemingly looking at a gigantic wall, over the face of which shone now and then bright flashes of light.
There was a shrieking and moaning in the air, so it seemed to the startled boy; and he failed to understand the meaning of this strange scene, until, the impenetrable wall having come so near, he could see that what appeared like flashes of light were gigantic columns of sand springing high in the air with fantastic shapes, and glinted by the sun from above the apparent vapor, until they were swallowed up in the enormous bank of cloud behind them.
Then it was Dick knew the meaning of this terrible danger which threatened him.
It was a storm of sand. "Dancing giants" some have termed it, and others speak of it as the "hot blizzard."
As if in an instant the dancing, swirling columns and the rushing cloud of sand, which swayed to and fro in fantastic movements, surrounded him.
He was in the centre of a cyclone freighted with particles of sand.
The wind roared until one might have believed he heard the crash of thunder.
Dick halted, terrified, bewildered; and as he came to a standstill, it seemed to him that the clouds on every hand lowered until he could see the blue sky above. Then with a shriek from the wind the very sand beneath his feet rose and fell like billows of the sea.