ng,
unhindered breaths.

The storm passed. It had come upon them suddenly, and it went away in
the same manner. There was very little lessening of its fury to tell
of the approaching end, but the air grew lighter all at once, the
sounds got fainter quickly, and there was now no longer any stinging
sand. The brown curtain passed on, trailing its fringe over the
desert, and the back of it could be seen as distinctly as the front had
been a short half-hour before.

A short half-hour before? Yes. The sandstorm had lasted barely thirty
minutes. It was so local, that Mick, riding along towards Sidcotinga
Station only forty miles away, knew nothing about it. Such tremendous
fury as these electric storms display is possible only when they
concentrate their power on a very small area. This one had probably
swept across a thousand miles of desert, and might go on for a thousand
more before it spent itself. It had come across the great tableland
behind the Musgrave Ranges, had been brought to a narrow point down one
of the gorges in the mountains, and had hurled itself at the three
defenceless men. It was a messenger of death from the Musgrave Ranges,
the mysterious, dreaded, fascinating Musgrave Ranges.

The air behind the storm was cool and bright and clean. Not a spot of
rain had fallen, but there was the same new-washed freshness about
everything which comes after a sudden summer shower. The blue of the
sky seemed clearer and more flawless than it had ever seemed before, in
contrast with the depressing sultriness of the morning, and even the
sun, shining down without the thinnest veil to lessen its fiery
strength, seemed to look with a less unfriendly eye than usual.

And what did it see? Vaughan had been under the sun-shelter when the
storm broke. The first gust had blown the flimsy structure down flat,
and the weight of sand, which poured immediately on to it, prevented it
from being blown away. The frightened white boy had been pinned under
the fallen boughs and had been unable to get free while the storm
lasted. It had been a fortunate accident for him, for he was compelled
to lie still, in perfect safety, while the gale surged over him,
instead of trying, as his friend Sax had done, to match his puny
strength against it.

Poor Sax had been absolutely winded. In his anxiety to find the
canteen, he had exhausted his strength in fighting the storm, and had
no power left to breathe in such a stifling at