CHAPTER V

The Sandstorm

As Arthur Reeves had predicted, the captives were now better treated by their Arab masters. The camel's rope was cut off, although the iron chains still secured their wrists; and when the camp was struck, and the march southwards was resumed, they were allowed to take turns at riding upon one of the baggage camels.

The two tribes parted peaceably at the oasis, with many shouts of farewell and firing of guns; but there was no doubt that had the followers of the Sheikh Abdullah been the more numerous, the disappointed bargainer would not have hesitated to take the desired Kafir from the Sheikh Wadherim's possession by force.

True to his vow, the latter reached El Keifa ere morning. This stage of the journey was not so tedious as the first day's, the distance being shorter, while there were two small intervening oases where halts were made under the light of the stars.

Here the Arabs rested for the following day, for the next stage, crossing a waterless tract of desert, where the only guide posts were the bleached bones of camels that had fallen out by the way, required at least forty hours to complete.

Just after sunset the laborious task commenced. The three captives had each been provided with a dirty, ragged _burnous_, which during the heat of the day protected not only the head but also the back. Already the upper parts of their bodies were getting accustomed to the sun. At first the skin burned a vivid red, but it soon acquired a deep bronze tint. Well it was that the captives at this stage were unable to make use of water for washing purposes, or their flesh would have been raw with the effect of the fierce heat.

Throughout the long night the march continued, and long before morning the lads, in spite of having a camel to ride between them--for Reeves firmly refused to avail himself of the animal--were almost crippled. Even the slow, measured, ungainly gait of the ship of the desert caused their bones to ache, till the alternate rests seemed to try them far more than tramping through the sand.

During the day the terrors of the march were intensified. Even some of the Arabs--hardy sons of the desert--had to fall out, although in every case a camel-man would chivalrously give up his beast to the sufferer and trudge patiently on foot. Many of the camels also sank upon the burning sand, never again to rise, while in the rear of the column gaunt vultures hovered in dreadful expectancy of a feast. The sheep and cattle, too, died in large quantities, till the Sheikh Wadherim began to think that he would arrive at his journey's end far poorer than when he set out for the seacoast to enrich himself with the spoils of the Kafir invaders. Strangely enough, the horses came off best. They were thoroughly seasoned, and could stand the hardships of a day's journey better than the camels, although had the distance been greater the conditions would have been reversed.

Before the sun was low in the heavens, the camel that the lads had been provided with was taken to assist a helpless Arab, and the Englishmen had perforce to complete the journey afoot--if they could. Mile after mile they trudged despairingly, without the heart to speak a word. To them there seemed no end to their trials. Ahead was the gently undulating desert, with its gruesome monuments of sun-bleached bones, but nothing to indicate the oasis for which the caravan was making.

Suddenly a warning shout came from the head of the column. Men began to dismount from their lofty steeds, and to run towards the baggage animals and the camels on which the women and children were seated. Others, with frantic cries, urged the already quivering animals to their knees.

"Cover your faces, boys!" gasped the correspondent, as he led them to the side of a prostrate hierie. "It's a sandstorm!"

The lads had barely time to grasp the situation. The air around them, almost motionless, was hot and oppressive; but less than three hundred yards away, and momentarily drawing nearer, was a dark-brown pillar of sand, trailing away into a seething, ill-defined cloud.

Already the Arabs, drawing their _haiks_ over their faces, were kneeling beside their steeds. The deathly silence was broken only by the startled cries of some of the younger children and the ever-increasing hiss of the wind.

Then the sandstorm burst. If one has ever had the experience of standing in the midst of a continuous shower of spray, and gasping salt-laden air into the lungs, the sensation can be faintly realized--only instead of spray it was sand-laden, burning, suffocating vapour.

For just half a minute the lads stood the terrible ordeal; then, in their desperation, they rose to their feet, only to be forced to the ground by the strong grasp of Arthur Reeves. There they lay, gasping like stranded fishes, for a space of nearly five minutes, till the correspondent's detaining grip was relaxed.

When the mist cleared from before their throbbing, blood-shot eyes, a strange sight met their gaze.

Some of the horses, half-buried in sand, were plunging wildly and snorting with terror.

Those of the Arabs who had managed to extricate themselves from the hot sand were endeavouring to release their less-fortunate comrades; while the half-buried camels remained in a kneeling position, with their long-lashed eyelids drooping over their large dark eyes, as if absolutely indifferent to the peril they had undergone.

Fortunately the storm had been of comparatively short duration, and the loss of life was in consequence confined to the cattle and horses. Some of the latter, in their terror, had fled wildly from the hot blast, and, being overtaken by it, had perished miserably, a few hummocks of drifted sand marking the places where they fell.

Ere the march could be resumed, a prolonged halt was called, and a fairly liberal amount of water given to men and cattle. Much of the baggage had to be abandoned, for want of sufficient means of transport.

At length the wearied men arrived at the oasis of El Tebat, where two more days were spent ere the march was resumed. Thence, after thirty days, following a widely-spaced chain of oases, the Sheikh Wadherim brought his tribe back to their native haunts of Wadi Tlat. With his men, and their wives and families, flocks, herds, and other possessions, he had journeyed to the sea in the belief that the followers of Mohammed would gain an easy victory over the unbelievers, and, rich in booty, would live at their ease in the fertile oases by the coast till the call of the desert would once again have to be obeyed. If his faith in the Prophet had been rudely shaken, the sheikh gave no sign of his bad fortune.

Wadi Tlat, situated on the southern border of the great Plateau of Ahaggar, was the name given by the Tlat River to the surrounding valley. The country, though rugged, abounded with coarse herbage, and nearly ten thousand nomads found means of subsistence in the district watered by the river and two of its tributaries.

What lay to the southward of the plateau none of the Arabs knew. To them it was a broad, trackless desert, peopled by the jinns or spirits of an evil world; and although the Tlat--usually little more than a series of shallow pools, connected at certain points of the river by a narrow stream fed by a lake up in the mountains--flowed in a south-westerly direction, none of the Arabs had the courage to follow its course beyond Bab-el-Jinn--the Gate of Evil Spirits--two bleak and massive rocks standing like giant pinnacles in the middle of a narrow gorge.

Here, at Wadi Tlat, full six hundred miles from the sea, Arthur Reeves, Hugh, and Gerald entered into a new phase of their captivity, far beyond the help of any European influence, and doomed, apparently, to lifelong slavery!