The Jungle Girl | Page 8

quite as bad as that," she answered. "But unpleasant enough, I assure you. If only we had any shelter!"
Wargrave looked around desperately. He had hitherto no experience of desert country; and the sudden darkness and the grim menace of the approaching black wall of the sandstorm seemed to threaten disaster. He saw a thick clump of cactus half a mile away.
"We'd better make for that," he said, pointing to it. "It will serve to break the force of the wind if we get to leeward of it. Let's mount."
He put her on her horse and then swung himself up into the saddle. Together they raced for the scant shelter before the dark menace overspreading earth and sky. The sun was now hidden; but that brought no relief, for the heat was even more stifling and oppressive than before. The wind seemed like a blast of hot air from an opened furnace door.
Pulling up when they reached the dense thicket of cactus with its broad green leaves studded with cruel thorns, Wargrave jumped down and lifted Mrs. Norton from the saddle. The horses followed them instinctively, as they pressed as closely as they could to the shelter of the inhospitable plant. The animals turned their tails towards the approaching storm and instinctively huddled against their human companions in distress. Wargrave took off his jacket and spread it around Mrs. Norton's head, holding her to him.
With a shrill wail the dark storm swept down upon them, and a million sharp particles of sand beat on them, stinging, smothering, choking them. The horses crowded nearer to the man, and the woman clung tighter to him as he wrapped her more closely in the protecting cloth. He felt suffocated, stifled, his lungs bursting, his throat burning, while every breath he drew was laden with the irritating sand. It penetrated through all the openings of his clothing, down his collar, inside his shirt, into his boots. The heat was terrific, unbearable, the darkness intense. Wargrave began to wonder if his first apprehensions were not justified, if they could hope to escape alive or were destined to be buried under the stifling pall that enveloped them. He felt against him the soft body of the woman clinging desperately to him; and the warm contact thrilled him. A feeling of pity, of tenderness for her awoke in him at the thought that this young and attractive being was fated perhaps to perish by so awful a death. And instinctively, unconsciously, he held her closer to him.
For minutes that seemed hours the storm continued to shriek and roar over and around them. But at length the choking waves began to diminish in density and slowly, gradually, the deadly, smothering pall was lifted from them. The black wall passed on and Wargrave watched it moving away over the desert. The storm had lasted half an hour, but the subaltern believed its duration to have been hours. The fine grit had penetrated into the case of his wrist-watch and stopped it. A cool, refreshing breeze sprang up. Pulling his jacket off Mrs. Norton's head, Wargrave said:
"It's all over at last."
"Oh, thank God!" she exclaimed fervently, standing erect and drawing a deep breath of cool air into her labouring lungs. "I thought I was going to be smothered."
"It was a decidedly unpleasant experience and one I don't want to try again. My throat is parched; I must have swallowed tons of sand. And look at the state I'm in!"
He was powdered thick with it, clothes, hair, eyebrows, grey with it. It had caked on his face damp with perspiration.
"Thanks to your jacket I've escaped pretty well, although I was almost suffocated," she said. "Well, now that it is over surely someone will come to look for us."
"Then we had better get up on our horses and move out into the open. We'll be more visible," said Wargrave.
Yet he felt a strange reluctance to quit the spot; for the thought came to him that their unpleasant experience in it would henceforth be a link between them. A few hours before he had not known of this woman's existence! and now he had held her to his breast and tried to protect her against the forces of Nature. The same idea seemed born in her mind at the same time; for, when he had brushed the dust off her saddle and lifted her on to it, she turned to look with interest at the spot as they rode away from it.
They had not long to wait out in the open before they saw three or four riders spread over the desert apparently looking for them, so they cantered towards them. As soon as they were seen by the search party a sowar galloped to meet them and, saluting, told them that the Maharajah