s dark as
a starless midnight. A screaming sound filled the boy's ears: the
yelling of the storm, the laughter of the furies, the shrill shouts of
fiends. He had to shield his mouth in order to breathe, and even then
a fine dust choked his throat, and he would have coughed and vomited up
his very life if he had not turned his back to the storm. Enormous
quantities of sand were crowding the gale.

Have you ever stood under a waterfall and let a solid column of water
fall on you from a height? You can stand there only for a moment,
because the power of even a liquid is greater than the strength of man.
But here, in the desert, three exhausted men were fighting for their
lives with sand; sand, as solid as it could possibly be without being
actually fixed; sand, as hard as it could possibly be, and yet be
driven by the wind. The electric gale of wind had scooped the surface
off a thousand miles of desert, and was flinging it at three puny human
beings.

It was impossible to face the onslaught. Sax turned against the storm
and tried to crawl backwards. At all costs he must find the canteen.
He had no thought but this: the canteen! the canteen! Three lives
depended on those drops of precious liquid. Were they safe? He
crawled backwards inch by inch. But he had lost all sense of
direction. The stinging, stifling sand, the shrill-screaming wind, the
pitch-black whirling darkness; how could a man possibly tell where he
was going?

Stobart's senses were all numb with the buffeting of the storm, but he
suddenly felt that one of his legs was being held. He tried to kick
free but was pulled backwards, and then something flapped and covered
him. There was instant peace. He had found a shelter. Outside this
unknown something which covered him the gale raged past in impotent
fury. He was safe. An arm gripped his body and held him close.

The sudden reaction from fighting for his life to this secure peace was
too much for the overwrought boy. He did not bother to find out who or
what had saved him; he sank down, down, down into unconsciousness, and
as the peaceful darkness closed over his mind, he muttered the words:
"Canteen, canteen, canteen."

No one heard. No one could possibly hear in such a storm, not even the
man who was holding him so closely. It was Yarloo. The boy had found
his master's son, and had covered his head with a coat, and was now
holding the unconscious form in his arms, while Sax drew lo