ight.

The Arabs say that, once "submerged" beneath the arenaceous "flood", a
man loses the power to extricate himself. His energies are suspended,
his senses become numbed and torpid, in short, he feels as one who goes
to sleep in a snow-storm. It may be true; but, whether or no, it seemed
as if the four English castaways had been stricken with this
inexplicable paralysis. Despite the hoarse roaring of the breakers,
despite the shrieking and whistling of the wind, despite the dust
constantly being deposited on their bodies, and entering ears, mouth and
nostrils, despite the stifling sensation one would suppose they must
have felt, and which should have awakened them, despite all, they
continued to sleep. It seemed as if that sleep was to be eternal.

If they heard not the storm that raged savagely above them, if they felt
not the sand that pressed heavily upon them, what was there to warn,
what to arouse them from that ill-starred slumber?

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

A MYSTERIOUS NIGHTMARE.

The four castaways had been asleep for a couple of hours, that is, from
the time that, following the example of the young Scotchman, they had
stretched themselves along the bottom of the ravine. It was not quite
an hour, however, since the commencement of the sandstorm; and yet, in
this short time, the arenaceous dust had accumulated to the thickness of
several inches upon their bodies; and a person passing the spot, or even
stepping right over them, could not have told that four human beings
were buried beneath; that is, upon the supposition that they would have
lain still, and not got startled from their slumbers by the foot thus
treading upon them.

Perhaps it was a fortunate circumstance for them, that by such a
contingency they might be awakened; and that by such they were awakened.

Otherwise their sleep might have been protracted into that still deeper
sleep from which there is no awaking.

All four had begun to feel, if any sensation while asleep can be so
called, a sense of suffocation, accompanied by a heaviness of the limbs
and torpidity in the joints; as if some, immense weight was pressing
upon their bodies, that rendered it impossible for them to stir either
toe or finger. It was a sensation similar to that so well-known, and so
much dreaded, under the name of nightmare. It may have been the very
same; and was, perhaps, brought on as much by the extreme weariness they
all felt, as by the superincumbent weigh