"Our buckets are full, aren't they?" questioned Anne.
"Yes—of sand," spoke up Elfreda.
"The first thing to do is to settle the water question. Ping!"
Ping Wing came running up, his white suit the color of the landscape, for Ping had been rolled in the sand to his utter undoing.
"Go see how many horses we have left."
"Me savvy. Tlee."
"Three? That is better than I hoped for," chuckled the guide. "With three we can reasonably look forward to finding the others somewhere on the desert, but we can't do much to improve our situation until daylight. No use to search for our equipment before then. I will look into the water question, however, right now."
"This is the most violent landscape that it has ever been my misfortune to gaze upon," declared Elfreda Briggs, tossing her fallen hair up and down to shake the sand out of it, a proceeding that was followed by each of the girls.
"At least we have one thing to be thankful for," observed Anne. "I thank my stars that it is so dark that we cannot see how really tough we do look."
"If I look as bad as I feel I must be a terrible sight," wailed
Emma. "Here comes Hi. Have we water?"