heat awful?" she exclaimed, trying to fan herself
with the few inches of cambric and lace that represented a
handkerchief.
"Awful. The blood seems to be boiling in my head," gasped the
subaltern. "I've never felt heat like this anywhere else in India. But,
thank goodness, it seems to be clouding over. That will make it cooler."
Mrs. Norton looked around. A dun veil was being swiftly drawn up
over sun and sky and blotting out the landscape.
"Good gracious! There's worse trouble coming. That's a sandstorm,"
she cried, for the first time exhibiting a sign of nervousness.
"Good heavens, how pleasant! Are we going to be buried under a
mound of sand, like the pictures we used to have in our schoolbooks of
caravans overwhelmed in the Sahara?"
Mrs. Norton smiled.
"Not 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
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