“On, on!” shouted the rear-guard of the Spaniards. “On, or we will fire at you.”
“We will follow immediately,” replied my father. “On my word of honour—on the word of an Englishman.”
The Spaniards had never known that word broken, so they allowed us to stop to help the Indian. One of our baggage mules was lightly laden, and in spite of the threats of the soldiers we lifted him upon it. I had, as I mentioned, filled a small spirit-flask with water, and unseen I poured a few drops down his parched throat. This much revived him, and by urging on our animals, we were soon able to overtake the already weary horses of the Spaniards.
The time for breakfast had long since passed, but still no signs of a resting-place appeared. On the contrary, the sand became finer and deeper, and the dreary expanse before us seemed to lengthen out to the horizon. As the sun also rose higher in the sky, his unobstructed rays darted down with greater force upon our heads. There had been a slight breeze in the morning, blowing fresh from over the snowy summits of the Cordilleras; but that had now died entirely away, and not a breath of air stirred the stagnant atmosphere. The heat at length became almost insupportable, while our eyes could scarcely bear the glare of the sun on the white glittering sand.
To do the Spaniards credit, they bore up bravely for a long time against the heat and thirst and fatigue which assailed them. The horses, however, which had only been scantily supplied with water the night before, began to knock up—their ears dropped, their heads hung down, and their respiration became thick and fast. Ithulpo had supplied my father and me with cacao, by chewing a piece of which occasionally, we avoided any feeling of hunger; and as we also wetted our lips, when they became parched, with the water from our flasks, we did not suffer much from thirst. Still the sensation of oppression and fatigue was very painful. We received too, ere long, a warning of what might be our fate, in the spectacle which met our sight. The sun had reached his meridian height, and was descending towards the waters of the Pacific, and still it appeared that we had made no more progress than in the morning, when we came upon the bleached bones of several mules and horses, and by their side appeared, just rising above the sand, the skeletons of three human beings. It appeared as if they had all been struck down together by the same fiery blast. The soldiers, as we passed, turned their looks aside, without uttering a word, each one feeling that he might shortly become like those ghastly remnants of mortality. I observed that the heads of the animals were all turned towards the south, by which I judged that thus they had probably travelled over a greater distance of the burning desert than we had yet passed, so that we were yet not half over our difficulties.
“Those skeletons show that we are on the high road across the desert,” I remarked to my father.
“I am afraid not, David,” he answered. “They may have lost their way, and we have stumbled on them by chance.”
Such, I at once saw, was too likely to be the case.
The gauze-like mist of which I had before spoken, now appeared to grow more dense, and to lose its transparent appearance; at the same time that the rays of the sun struck down with fiercer heat, and the atmosphere grew more stagnant and oppressive. Some of the soldiers had lighted their cigars, in the hope that the fumes of tobacco would alleviate their thirst; and as the tiny jets of smoke left their mouths, they went straight up towards the sky, not a breath existing to blow them aside. Suddenly, as I turned my head to the left, I saw what appeared to be a dark cloud rising from the earth. I pointed it out to my father. Ithulpo had at the same time observed it.
“Muffle up your heads in your ponchos, and push on for the love of life,” he exclaimed. “It is the sand-drift swept before a whirlwind. On! on! or it will overwhelm us!”