Queen Sheba's Ring

  CHAPTER IV

  THE DEATH WIND

  "The fact is," said Higgs presently, speaking with the air of an oracle,"the fact is that all these accursed sand-hills are as like each otheras mummy beads on the same necklace, and therefore it is very difficultto know them apart. Give me that water-bottle, Adams; I am as dry as alime-kiln."

  "No," I said shortly; "you may be drier before the end."

  "What do you mean? Oh! I see; but that's nonsense; those Zeus will huntus up, or, at the worst, we have only to wait till the sun gets out."

  As he spoke, suddenly the air became filled with a curious singing soundimpossible to describe, caused as I knew, who had often heard it before,by millions and millions of particles of sand being rubbed together. Weturned to see whence it came, and perceived, far away, rushing towardsus with extraordinary swiftness, a huge and dense cloud preceded byisolated columns and funnels of similar clouds.

  "A sand-storm," said Higgs, his florid face paling a little. "Bad luckfor us! That's what comes of getting out of bed the wrong side firstthis morning. No, it's your fault, Adams; you helped me to salt lastnight, in spite of my remonstrances" (the Professor has sundry littlesuperstitions of this sort, particularly absurd in so learned a man)."Well, what shall we do? Get under the lee of the hill until it blowsover?"

  "Don't suppose it will blow over. Can't see anything to do except sayour prayers," remarked Orme with sweet resignation. Oliver is, I think,the coolest hand in an emergency of any one I ever met, except, perhaps,Sergeant Quick, a man, of course, nearly old enough to be his father."The game seems to be pretty well up," he added. "Well, you have killedtwo lions, Higgs, and that is something."

  "Oh, hang it! You can die if you like, Oliver. The world won't miss you;but think of its loss if anything happened to _me_. I don't intend to bewiped out by a beastly sand-storm. I intend to live to write a book onMur," and Higgs shook his fist at the advancing clouds with an air thatwas really noble. It reminded me of Ajax defying the lightning.

  Meanwhile I had been reflecting.

  "Listen," I said. "Our only chance is to stop where we are, for if wemove we shall certainly be buried alive. Look; there is somethingsolid to lie on," and I pointed to a ridge of rock, a kind of core ofcongealed sand, from which the surface had been swept by gales. "Downwith you, quick," I went on, "and let's draw that lion-skin over ourheads. It may help to keep the dust from choking us. Hurry, men; it'scoming!"

  Coming, it was indeed, with a mighty, wailing roar. Scarcely had we gotourselves into position, our backs to the blast and our mouths andnoses buried after the fashion of camels in a similar predicament, thelion-skin covering our heads and bodies to the middle, with the pawstucked securely beneath us to prevent it from being blown away, when thestorm leaped upon us furiously, bringing darkness in its train. Therewe lay for hour after hour, unable to see, unable to talk because of theroaring noise about us, and only from time to time lifting ourselvesa little upon our hands and knees to disturb the weight of sand thataccumulated on our bodies, lest it should encase us in a living tomb.

  Dreadful were the miseries we suffered--the misery of the heat beneaththe stinking pelt of the lion, the misery of the dust-laden air thatchoked us almost to suffocation, the misery of thirst, for we could notget at our scanty supply of water to drink. But worst of all perhaps,was the pain caused by the continual friction of the sharp sand drivenalong at hurricane speed, which, incredible as it may seem, finally woreholes in our thin clothing and filed our skins to rawness.

  "No wonder the Egyptian monuments get such a beautiful shine on them," Iheard poor Higgs muttering in my ear again and again, for he was growinglight-headed; "no wonder, no wonder! My shin-bones will be very usefulto polish Quick's tall riding-boots. Oh! curse the lions. Why did youhelp me to salt, you old ass; why did you help me to salt? It's picklingme behind."

  Then he became quite incoherent, and only groaned from time to time.

  Perhaps, however, this suffering did us a service, since otherwiseexhaustion, thirst, and dust might have overwhelmed our senses, andcaused us to fall into a sleep from which we never should have awakened.Yet at the time we were not grateful to it, for at last the agony becamealmost unbearable. Indeed, Orme told me afterwards that the last thinghe could remember was a quaint fancy that he had made a colossal fortuneby selling the secret of a new torture to the Chinese--that of hot sanddriven on to the victim by a continuous blast of hot air.

  After a while we lost count of time, nor was it until later that welearned that the storm endured for full twenty hours, during the latterpart of which, notwithstanding our manifold sufferings, we must havebecome more or less insensible. At any rate, at one moment I rememberedthe awful roar and the stinging of the sand whips, followed by a kindof vision of the face of my son--that beloved, long-lost son whom I hadsought for so many years, and for whose sake I endured all these things.Then, without any interval, as it were, I felt my limbs being scorchedas though by hot irons or through a burning-glass, and with a fearfuleffort staggered up to find that the storm had passed, and that thefurious sun was blistering my excoriated skin. Rubbing the caked dirtfrom my eyes, I looked down to see two mounds like those of graves, outof which projected legs that had been white. Just then one pair of legs,the longer pair, stirred, the sand heaved up convulsively, and, utteringwandering words in a choky voice, there arose the figure of Oliver Orme.

  For a moment we stood and stared at each other, and strange spectacleswe were.

  "Is he dead?" muttered Orme, pointing to the still buried Higgs.

  "Fear so," I answered, "but we'll look;" and painfully we began todisinter him.

  When we came to it beneath the lion-skin, the Professor's face was blackand hideous to see, but, to our relief, we perceived that he was notdead, for he moved his hand and moaned. Orme looked at me.

  "Water would save him," I said.

  Then came the anxious moment. One of our water-bottles was emptiedbefore the storm began, but the other, a large, patent flask coveredwith felt, and having a screw vulcanite top, should still contain a goodquantity, perhaps three quarts--that is, if the fluid had not evaporatedin the dreadful heat. If this had happened, it meant that Higgswould die, and unless help came, that soon we should follow him. Ormeunscrewed the flask, for my hands refused that office, and used histeeth to draw the cork, which, providentially enough the thoughtfulQuick had set in the neck beneath the screw. Some of the water, which,although it was quite hot, had _not_ evaporated, thank God! flew againsthis parched lips, and I saw him bite them till the blood came in thefierceness of the temptation to assuage his raging thirst. But heresisted it like the man he is, and, without drinking a drop, handed methe bottle, saying simply:

  "You are the oldest; take care of this, Adams."

  Now it was my turn to be tempted, but I, too, overcame, and, sittingdown, laid Higgs's head upon my knee; then, drop by drop, let a littleof the water trickle between his swollen lips.

  The effect was magical, for in less than a minute the Professor sat up,grasped at the flask with both hands, and strove to tear it away.

  "You cruel brute! You cruel selfish brute!" he moaned as I wrenched itfrom him.

  "Look here, Higgs," I answered thickly; "Orme and I want water badlyenough, and we have had none. But you might take it all if it would saveyou, only it wouldn't. We are lost in the desert, and must be sparing.If you drank everything now, in a few hours you would be thirsty againand die."

  He thought awhile, then looked up and said:

  "Beg pardon--I understand. I'm the selfish brute. But there's a good lotof water there; let's each have a drink; we can't move unless we do."

  So we drank, measuring out the water in a little india-rubber cup whichwe had with us. It held about as much as a port wine glass, and each ofus drank, or rather slowly sipped, three cupfuls; we who felt as thoughwe could have swallowed a gallon apiece, and asked for more. Small aswas the allowance, it worked wonders in us; we were men again.

  We sto
od up and looked about us, but the great storm had changedeverything. Where there had been sand-hills a hundred feet high,now were plains and valleys; where there had been valleys appearedsand-hills. Only the high ridge upon which we had lain was as before,because it stood above the others and had a core of rock. We tried todiscover the direction of the oasis by the position of the sun, only tobe baffled, since our two watches had run down, and we did not know thetime of day or where the sun ought to be in the heavens. Also, inthat howling wilderness there was nothing to show us the points of thecompass.

  Higgs, whose obstinacy remained unimpaired, whatever may have happenedto the rest of his vital forces, had one view of the matter, and Ormeanother diametrically opposed to it. They even argued as to whetherthe oasis lay to our right or to our left, for their poor heads wereso confused that they were scarcely capable of accurate thought orobservation. Meanwhile I sat down upon the sand and considered. Throughthe haze I could see the points of what I thought must be the hillswhence the Zeus declared that the lions came, although of course, foraught I knew, they might be other hills.

  "Listen," I said; "if lions live upon those hills, there must be waterthere. Let us try to reach them; perhaps we shall see the oasis as wego."

  Then began our dreadful march. The lion-skin that had saved our lives,and was now baked hard as a board, we left behind, but the rifles wetook. All day long we dragged ourselves up and down steep sand-slopes,pausing now again to drink a sip of water, and hoping always that fromthe top of the next slope we should see a rescue party headed by Quick,or perhaps the oasis itself. Indeed, once we did see it, green andshining, not more than three miles away, but when we got to the head ofthe hill beyond which it should lie we found that the vision was onlya mirage, and our hearts nearly broke with disappointment. Oh! to mendying of thirst, that mirage was indeed a cruel mockery.

  At length night approached, and the mountains were yet a long way off.We could march no more, and sank down exhausted, lying on our faces,because our backs were so cut by the driving sand and blistered bythe sun that we could not sit. By now almost all our water was gone.Suddenly Higgs nudged us and pointed upwards. Following the line of hishand, we saw, not thirty yards away and showing clear against the sky,a file of antelopes trekking along the sand-ridge, doubtless on a nightjourney from one pasturage to another.

  "You fellows shoot," he muttered; "I might miss and frighten them away,"for in his distress poor Higgs was growing modest.

  Slowly Orme and I drew ourselves to our knees, cocking our rifles. Bythis time all the buck save one had passed; there were but six of them,and this one marched along about twenty yards behind the others. Ormepulled the trigger, but his rifle would not go off because, as hediscovered afterwards, some sand had worked into the mechanism of thelock.

  Meanwhile I had also covered the buck, but the sunset dazzled myweakened eyes, and my arms were feeble; also my terrible anxiety forsuccess, since I knew that on this shot hung our lives, unnerved me. Butit must be now or never; in three more paces the beast would be down thedip.

  I fired, and knowing that I had missed, turned sick and faint. Theantelope bounded forward a few yards right to the edge of the dip; then,never having heard such a sound before, and being overcome by some fatalcuriosity, stopped and turned around, staring at the direction whence ithad come.

  Despairingly I fired again, almost without taking aim, and this time thebullet went in beneath the throat, and, raking the animal, dropped itdead as a stone. We scrambled to it, and presently were engaged in anawful meal of which we never afterwards liked to think. Happily for usthat antelope must have drunk water not long before.

  Our hunger and thirst assuaged after this horrible fashion, we sleptawhile by the carcase, then arose extraordinarily refreshed, and, havingcut off some hunks of meat to carry with us, started on again. By theposition of the stars, we now knew that the oasis must lie somewhere tothe east of us; but as between us and it there appeared to be nothingbut these eternal sand-hills stretching away for many miles, and as infront of us toward the range the character of the desert seemed to bechanging, we thought it safer, if the word safety can be used in sucha connection, to continue to head for that range. All the remainder ofthis night we marched, and, as we had no fuel wherewith to cook it, atdawn ate some of the raw meat, which we washed down with the last dropsof our water.

  Now we were out of the sand-hills, and had entered on a great pebblyplain that lay between us and the foot of the mountains. These lookedquiet close, but in fact were still far off. Feebly and ever more feeblywe staggered on, meeting no one and finding no water, though here andthere we came across little bushes, of which we chewed the stringy andaromatic leaves that contained some moisture, but drew up our mouths andthroats like alum.

  Higgs, who was the softest of us, gave out the first, though to thelast he struggled forward with surprising pluck, even after he had beenobliged to throw away his rifle, because he could no longer carry it,though this we did not notice at the time. When he could not supporthimself upon his feet, Orme took him by one arm, and I by the other,and helped him on, much as I have seen two elephants do by a woundedcompanion of the herd.

  Half-an-hour or so later my strength failed me also. Although advancedin years, I am tough and accustomed to the desert and hardships; whowould not be who had been a slave to the Khalifa? But now I could do nomore, and halting, begged the others to go on and leave me. Orme's onlyanswer was to proffer me his left arm. I took it, for life is sweetto us all, especially when one has something to live for--a desireto fulfil as I had, though to tell the truth, even at the time I feltashamed of myself.

  Thus, then, we proceeded awhile, resembling a sober man attempting tolead two drunken friends out of reach of that stern policeman, Death.Orme's strength must be wonderful; or was it his great spirit and histender pity for our helplessness which enabled him to endure beneaththis double burden.

  Suddenly he fell down as though he had been shot, and lay theresenseless. The Professor, however, retained some portion of his mind,although it wandered. He became light-headed, and rambled on about ourmadness in having undertaken such a journey, "just to pot a couple ofbeastly lions," and although I did not answer them, I agreed heartilywith his remarks. Then he seemed to imagine that I was a clergyman, andkneeling on the sand, he made a lengthy confession of his sins which,so far as I gathered, though I did not pay much attention to them, forI was thinking of my own, appeared chiefly to consist of the unlawfulacquisition of certain objects of antiquity, or of having overmatchedothers in the purchase of such objects.

  To pacify him, for I feared lest he should go raving mad, I pronouncedsome religious absolution, whereon poor Higgs rolled over and lay stillby Orme. Yes; he, the friend whom I had always loved, for his veryfailings were endearing, was dead or at the point of death, like thegallant young man at his side, and I myself was dying. Tremors shookmy limbs; horrible waves of blackness seemed to well up from my vitals,through my breast to my brain, and thence to evaporate in queer, jaggedlines and patches, which I realized, but could not actually see. Gaymemories of my far-off childhood arose in me, particularly those of aChristmas party where I had met a little girl dressed like an elf,a little girl with blue eyes whom I had loved dearly for quite afortnight, to be beaten down, stamped out, swallowed by that visionof the imminent shadow which awaits all mankind, the black womb of are-birth, if re-birth there be.

  What could I do? I thought of lighting a fire; at any rate it wouldserve to scare the lions and other wild beasts which else might preyupon us before we were quite dead. It would be dreadful to lie helplessbut sentient, and feel their rending fangs. But I had no strength tocollect the material. To do so at best must have meant a long walk, foreven here it was not plentiful. I had a few cartridges left--three, tobe accurate--in my repeating rifle; the rest I had thrown away to be ridof their weight. I determined to fire them, since, in my state I thoughtthey could no longer serve either to win food or for the purposes ofdefence, although, as it h
appened, in this I was wrong. It was possiblethat, even in that endless desert, some one might hear the shots, and ifnot--well, good-night.

  So I sat up and fired the first cartridge, wondering in a childishfashion where the bullet would fall. Then I went to sleep for awhile.The howling of a hyena woke me up, and, on glancing around, I saw thebeast's flaming eyes quite close to me. I aimed and shot at it, andheard a yell of pain. That hyena, I reflected, would want no more foodat present.

  The silence of the desert overwhelmed me; it was so terrible that Ialmost wished the hyena back for company. Holding the rifle above myhead, I fired the third cartridge. Then I took the hand of Higgs in myown, for, after all, it was a link--the last link with humanity and theworld--and lay down in the company of death that seemed to fall upon mein black and smothering veils.