tucked securely beneath us to prevent it from being blown away, when the
storm leaped upon us furiously, bringing darkness in its train. There
we lay for hour after hour, unable to see, unable to talk because of the
roaring noise about us, and only from time to time lifting ourselves
a little upon our hands and knees to disturb the weight of sand that
accumulated on our bodies, lest it should encase us in a living tomb.

Dreadful were the miseries we suffered--the misery of the heat beneath
the stinking pelt of the lion, the misery of the dust-laden air that
choked us almost to suffocation, the misery of thirst, for we could not
get at our scanty supply of water to drink. But worst of all perhaps,
was the pain caused by the continual friction of the sharp sand driven
along at hurricane speed, which, incredible as it may seem, finally wore
holes in our thin clothing and filed our skins to rawness.

"No wonder the Egyptian monuments get such a beautiful shine on them," I
heard poor Higgs muttering in my ear again and again, for he was growing
light-headed; "no wonder, no wonder! My shin-bones will be very useful
to polish Quick's tall riding-boots. Oh! curse the lions. Why did you
help me to salt, you old ass; why did you help me to salt? It's pickling
me behind."

Then he became quite incoherent, and only groaned from time to time.

Perhaps, however, this suffering did us a service, since otherwise
exhaustion, thirst, and dust might have overwhelmed our senses, and
caused us to fall into a sleep from which we never should have awakened.
Yet at the time we were not grateful to it, for at last the agony became
almost unbearable. Indeed, Orme told me afterwards that the last thing
he could remember was a quaint fancy that he had made a colossal fortune
by selling the secret of a new torture to the Chinese--that of hot sand
driven on to the victim by a continuous blast of hot air.

After a while we lost count of time, nor was it until later that we
learned that the storm endured for full twenty hours, during the latter
part of which, notwithstanding our manifold sufferings, we must have
become more or less insensible. At any rate, at one moment I remembered
the awful roar and the stinging of the sand whips, followed by a kind
of vision of the face of my son--that beloved, long-lost son whom I had
sought for so many years, and for whose sake I endured all these things.
Then, without any interval, as it were, I felt my limb