"We must rest, and eat," at length said Inyati, "so too must the horses, or they may die before there is need."
We stripped the loads from the poor brutes, and divided the bags of t'samma we had piled upon them, and soon they were munching away contentedly, whilst we rigged up some sort of shelter and lay and panted till the evening.
Then, and then only, did we discuss what we were next to do. "Master," at length said Inyati, "think, and think well. To go back is still easy, to go forward may well be that we die even as these two have died!"
"The desert is drier than when I struggled through it, more dead than alive, by the path these people came by and that way it would be madness to try! South, we might find another path, but it will be a longer one and . . . my master can still return. And the stone that my master can take and I will go on and bring him more, if he will but return to the camp and there await me. . . . And if I come not in two moons, I shall be dead. . . ."
He held out the blue diamond as he spoke; but the offer, genuine as it undoubtedly was, acted as a taunt to me, and I bade him sternly put back the stone, and talk not to me of returning.
"Thou sayest that the desert is but beginning," I told him. "Am I then a weakling, to run back like a whipped hound, at the sight of a dead man? Nay, I will return with the stones I seek, or not at all!"
Inyati nodded his head sagely as he sucked at his cherished pipe.
"Aye! Aye!" he said softly. "Said I not that the stones were magic? Sad, even as a sick cow, was my master, till I showed him the stone, and now he is even again as a young bull!"
If he had meant to stir me from the apathy that the desert had brought upon me, he certainly succeeded, for his complimentary comparison of me to a sick cow again set me laughing! It was the first time I had laughed for days, and it did me good.
"Yes, we must go south," said Inyati, "but not far. Only half a march, and then we will turn again east. Thus shall we find the pans."
That night we did not wait for the moon, but saddled our still jaded nags before it was well dark, and walking most of the way to rest them, we set our faces towards the Southern Cross. Half way through the night we halted, and resting for a while, again pushed on, but this time due east. Dawn found us eagerly looking round for a change in the landscape if a featureless chaos of tumbled sand is worthy of such a name? but I, at any rate, could see nothing.
Not so Inyati; his eyes were better than my field-glasses.
"Look, master!" he said, as the sun rose, "there, and there, and there! little low clouds, just rising from those three places and they won't last long! They are pans, master, and it is mist that rises from them. There is moisture there may be water there."
"And food for the horses?" I asked him; for our poor brutes were in an awful state, and we had nothing to give them.
"That may well be," he said, "not on the pans, but near them. And, master, we must struggle on, and find out; for they cannot fast another day, and trek another night, without either food or drink."
The rising sun rapidly dispersed the little clouds that Inyati had pointed out, but we kept on in their direction, though the sand was now burning hot and the poor animals were suffering frightfully.
Now a few scattered bushes and tufts of bone-dry "toa" grass began to show in the hollows between the dunes, and at length, on breasting an unusually high one a veritable mountain of sand, three or four hundred feet in height a new and marvelous scene stretched before me.
Abruptly from the foot of the steep dune-slope stretched a vast, glittering expanse of the purest white; to all appearance a snow- covered lake, spotless and dazzling in the brilliant sunshine. It was almost a perfect circle in shape and several miles in diameter, and on all sides it was hemmed in by gigantic dunes.
"Salt, master!" said Inyati. "I have seen such places before, but, wow! this is a big one! And this is not the pan I seek. No good to us, master; but is it not strange? Yonder in my land this salt is a precious thing; for a basketful, one can obtain a fat cow, for a sackful, two or more young wives! Here is salt enough to buy many wives, master; but none to gather it or for that matter, no wives to buy! . . . But water, master, is what we seek, and not salt water or t'samma. . . . We must cross, master; there on the other side I see thick bush in the dunes, there may be t'samma there, and the way across is easy. Come!"
He led the way down the steep slope, dragging his jaded animals after him. At the edge, where sand ended and salt began, lay many bones, bleached and white almost as the salt itself, and amongst them were the bones of men. Snorting and afraid, the animals stepped gingerly on the smooth, snow-like surface, which yielded but an inch or two to their tread, and was pleasantly cool to their hooves, parched and cracking from their long trek in the burning sand. Beneath the white surface was a moist black mud, and the liquid brine oozed quickly into the horses' footprints. Used as we were to the glare of the sun on the burning sand, here it was literally blinding, and long before we reached the farther side we were groping and stumbling like blind men. It was much wider, too, than it had first appeared, and we were utterly exhausted when at long length we reached the dunes again, and to our joy found bush, and a few t'samma, most of them old and hard, but still enough green ones to provide a scanty meal for the suffering animals. A respite it was, but a respite only, and well we knew that we must push on or return at once. Our water bags still held enough to keep us alive a day or two, but we must find water or t'samma for the horses soon, or it was evident they could not last. We threw ourselves down on the burning sand, with a blanket stretched over a tiny bush affording scant shade for our heads, and in spite of the roasting heat I slept the sleep of utter exhaustion.
I awoke to find Inyati afoot, and intent on adjusting the blanket to shade my face from the setting sun. I got up, aching and throbbing in every part of my body, and parched with a thirst that the lukewarm and already vile-tasting water from our skin bags did little to alleviate.
"Master," said Inyati, looking at me with concern, "take thou of the bitter powder (quinine); and sleep again. Before morning I will come back. For I must seek the pan I know of, where water may be found. This cursed salt pan I did not see when I crossed before: the pan I know is one of the others we saw the clouds rise from; which I know not? So I seek the nearest, and if water is there, by moonrise I will be here again. If not, and I must seek the farther one, then when the sun stands a span high I will be back. Nay, better that I should go alone; rest, master, and let the horses rest too, for if I find not the water, our path will be a hard one!"
He shouldered his Winchester, and strode off, all my arguments failing to persuade him to take a drop of our little remaining store of water. I watched him striding away through the dunes till he was lost to sight, then I turned to and made a fire and some food; for I felt weak and ill and my head was burning. Then I looked to the horses, hobbling them short in case they should stray though, poor brutes, they were too worn out to be likely to do anything of the kind. Then I gathered all the dry stumps and bush I could find, and made a fire, for lion and leopard spoor were very plentiful: moreover, a fire would help Inyati to find his way back. Later, as night fell, I lay down and tried to sleep; but exhausted as I was I could not rest. My thoughts were with Inyati. Would he find the pan and water? And if not, what would happen? The horses would scarce be able to struggle back to the nearest t'samma we had left, and in any case, to go back, beaten! No, if Inyati gave any hope at all, I would push on as long as life lasted.
So I lay and mused by the flickering fire, listening for the occasional yelp of a jackal, or the horrible laughter of a hyena.
Sleep I could not; the horses too were restless, snorting and fidgeting as they bunched close together, only a yard or two from where I lay.
I wondered if lions were prowling near, but could hear or see nothing. The air was hot and stifling, and there was none of the pleasant coolness usual to even these summer nights in the desert, and on climbing to the crest of the dune to look vainly towards where Inyati must be wandering, I saw that the sky in that direction was heavy with clouds; and even as I looked, flash after flash of lightning rent their heavy pall.
"Thank God!" was my first thought, "there will be rain there, and if the pans lie there, we shall find water."
I stood and watched for some time, and saw that the storm was traveling towards me, but it was still far distant, and I returned to the fire and again tried to sleep, for the moon would not rise for several hours, and Inyati had said he could not be back before then.
And this time I slept, a heavy sleep full of distorted dreams.
At length I awoke with a start, just as a gust of wind caught the fire and scattered the embers in all directions. Another and another followed, each more violent than the preceding one, then came a terrific blast that whirled the blanket I had been lying on away into the night: the last firebrand was snatched up as though by an unseen hand, and borne high over the dune, and before I had time to realize what was happening I was fighting for my life in the howling darkness of a terrific sandstorm. The wind was demoniacal; it apparently blew from all quarters at once, in short, sharp, incessant gusts, lifting and whirling away everything that came in its path, shifting the loose sand in such masses, and hurling it with such force that to stand still would have meant being buried. Luckily the scanty vegetation where we had rested had 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 through which the storm had raged.
At no great distance from me, and, as I judged, in the direction of the spot at which the storm had overtaken me, a gigantic dune lay piled high above the others. This was some of the devilish work of the past night, for it had not been there yesterday!
There appeared no likelihood of a return of the storm; and, full of anxiety and distress, I made my way to this newly-formed dune, which apparently covered the exact spot of our camp of overnight; but now no vestige of bush remained in sight anywhere: it was all buried fathoms deep in sand. And gone too were many of our belongings, for with the exception of the one pack-saddle, to which one of the water-skins was providentially made fast, I had had no time to pick up anything; and now the half of our precious water, and much of our stores and ammunition, were covered by the thousands of tons of the gigantic dune. Search as I could, in all directions, I could find no trace of them, they had gone irretrievably; and gaze as I could from the highest point of the new dune I could see no sign of life, and the sad conviction was forced upon me that Inyati had perished, and that I was alone.
