rd spoor were very plentiful: moreover, a fire would help Inyati
to find his way back. Later, as night fell, I lay down and tried to
sleep; but exhausted as I was I could not rest. My thoughts were with
Inyati. Would he find the pan and water? And if not, what would happen?
The horses would scarce be able to struggle back to the nearest t'samma
we had left, and in any case, to go back, beaten! No, if Inyati gave
any hope at all, I would push on as long as life lasted.

So I lay and mused by the flickering fire, listening for the occasional
yelp of a jackal, or the horrible laughter of a hyena.

Sleep I could not; the horses too were restless, snorting and fidgeting
as they bunched close together, only a yard or two from where I lay.

I wondered if lions were prowling near, but could hear or see nothing.
The air was hot and stifling, and there was none of the pleasant
coolness usual to even these summer nights in the desert, and on
climbing to the crest of the dune to look vainly towards where Inyati
must be wandering, I saw that the sky in that direction was heavy with
clouds; and even as I looked, flash after flash of lightning rent their
heavy pall.

"Thank God!" was my first thought, "there will be rain there, and if
the pans lie there, we shall find water."

I stood and watched for some time, and saw that the storm was traveling
towards me, but it was still far distant, and I returned to the fire
and again tried to sleep, for the moon would not rise for several
hours, and Inyati had said he could not be back before then.

And this time I slept, a heavy sleep full of distorted dreams.

At length I awoke with a start, just as a gust of wind caught the fire
and scattered the embers in all directions. Another and another
followed, each more violent than the preceding one, then came a
terrific blast that whirled the blanket I had been lying on away into
the night: the last firebrand was snatched up as though by an unseen
hand, and borne high over the dune, and before I had time to realize
what was happening I was fighting for my life in the howling darkness
of a terrific sandstorm. The wind was demoniacal; it apparently blew
from all quarters at once, in short, sharp, incessant gusts, lifting
and whirling away everything that came in its path, shifting the loose
sand in such masses, and hurling it with such force that to stand still
would have meant being buried. Luckily the scanty vegetation where we
had rested h