ad somewhat bound the sand, but in a few minutes of the
awful struggle I realized that unless I could reach some firmer spot I
must be overwhelmed. A momentary lull showed me the horses half buried,
and apparently too stupefied to do more than stand passively awaiting
their fate.

The salt pan! That was my only chance: there, at least, the very ground
would not dissolve beneath my feet, as it was doing here! And I must
make for it at once, for the whirling cataclysm of sand was again
closing upon me. Seizing the horses I cut their hobbles, and throwing
one of the packs across the nearest I coaxed and dragged him from the
sand. I had my rifle, and I had no time for anything else, but made off
in the direction of the pan, barely fifty yards away; but so terrible
was now the force of the wind that I was hard put to it to reach it,
and thankful indeed was I when a brief lull showed me the wide expanse
of white spreading dimly before me in the murk.

Even here the ever-recurring whirlwinds bore huge volumes of sand
eddying across the pan, and at times I feared I should be choked and
overwhelmed, but as I gradually neared the centre the air grew clearer,
and I knew that for the time, at least, I was safe.

The horses had struggled out after their leader, and stood trembling
near me; luckily I had left them saddled and bridled in anticipation of
an early start, but the other pack was lying there in the dunes. And
thus I awaited the abatement of the storm, a prey to the most awful
suspense.

Inyati! There in the distant dunes if the storm had caught him in their
midst he must be dead, overwhelmed and buried in the chaos of sand! Or
had he been able to gain one of the pans first; and would the abatement
of the storm see him return to me?

Hour after hour I waited, and still it raged; the time for moonrise was
long since past, though no gleam of its waning light could break
through the whirling pall around me. Moonrise! That had been the time
Inyati had hoped to return by, should he find water in the first pan;
but where was he now, battling for his life among the dunes, or dead
beneath them?

At length day dawned; and with the light the storm ceased as suddenly
as it had begun, though still huge clouds of dust hung all around,
through which the rising sun gleamed red and ray-less, as through a
thick fog.

Soon not a breath of wind remained, and the dust rapidly settling,
disclosed the tossed and distorted wilderness thr