After it had gone on for a quarter of an hour or so, we three, with Firoz carrying our two spades and a pick, went to the far end where we had made the dam.
We already found a thin trickle of water reaching it and apparently being sucked up by the sand. But a little later the dam had bound together, and we stood there in the rain watching with delighted eyes the growth of a small black pool that spread and spread until the end of it passed out of the misty halo of light. Wrexham stayed there till dawn like a Dutchman saving a dyke, getting up at intervals with Firoz to heap more and more sand on to the outer and upper sides of his dam.
“Not bad calculations,” he said, when the growing dawn revealed to us a pool of water—somewhat sandy, but still water—some thirty feet long, as much as three feet wide in places, and nearly a foot deep in the middle of the deepest pool. “I should say there was at least one hundred and fifty gallons there.”
Our first care was to fill up every utensil we had, and from them, straining through several thicknesses of cloth, to replenish all the tanks. Then we gave the camels as much as they could swallow. You could almost see the poor beasts swelling as they drank. Even after that there was a certain amount left, rather sandy and muddy.
Wrexham looked at it.
“If I thought that would last the day, I would suggest stopping here till to-morrow to give the camels a rest and another drink, but what doesn’t evaporate will soak through the dam, so it would be no score. We’d better use what’s left for a bath.”
So we did, and felt new men once more. The two Punjabis followed, but Sadiq, beyond washing his face and hands, did not appear interested. The removal of the sand crust from his face seemed quite enough ablutions in his estimation. We started rather later than usual, and, although the rain had ceased, the sky was yet heavy with clouds. The air was clear, but there was no great visibility in the horizon.
Once we left the rock where we had camped, the rain seemed to have made little difference to the sands, save that the upper surface was somewhat caked, but it was refreshing to breathe air that was air and not part sand. There was only a gentle breeze, and it was free from the irritating particles that we had been breathing for the last few days. The dunes were still very high, despite Wrexham’s opinion that they ought to be getting lower. I estimated that the majority of them were little under eighty feet in height most of that day. There was a very slight steaminess in the air as the sun warmed, but as the sky cleared we began to see farther and farther.
Men and beasts alike stepped out briskly, for the downpour had put new life into us all. As we went, we climbed each fresh dune in the hope of seeing a new glimpse of the hills in front, but for a long time saw nothing beyond the desert’s yellow edge. A thick bank of cloud still hung to the northeast, although the sky above us was by now clear blue.
We halted about one o’clock, and it was after that, as the sun began to start down on his journey westward, that we were rewarded by our first view of the hills. Forsyth was the first to draw our attention to the clouds to the northeast having thinned considerably, and a little later Payindah called to me as we topped a dune. Wrexham was down in the dip in front.