The drover had advised the boys to stay just where they were till he returned, and not exhaust themselves by walking. Yarloo therefore built them a rough sun-shelter of mulga boughs and they rested under this all day, doing nothing which would create thirst. In spite of every care, however, their mouths were clammy and their throats calling out for water long before sunset. Once a real thirst is created, it takes more water to quench it than it does to keep the thirst away, so they each had a drink at tea-time and felt all the better for it.

Soon after tea, Yarloo, who had gone away, came in with a bundle of sticks. "Whatever's that for?" asked Sax. Neither of the boys had got into the way of addressing the natives in broken English. "You're surely not going to make a fire, are you?"

Yarloo had to think for a minute or two before he understood what the white boy had said, and then he nodded his head. "Yah," he replied.

"Me make um fire. S'pose um bad black-fella come up."

"But how about us?" objected Vaughan. "We'll be roasted alive."

The native did not catch the meaning of this remark, but he answered the question which Vaughan had in his mind. "By'm bye when it cool,"

Yarloo pointed to the sky, "we walk little bit."

"But Mick told us to stay here," said Vaughan again.

"Me think bad black-fella come up to-night," explained Yarloo, with great patience. "S'pose him see um fire, him think: 'White man sleep'.

Then him creep up, spear-um, spear-um. S'pose we light fire then walk, bad black-fella throw um spear, no good, no good at all. White man go 'way." Yarloo grinned both at the thought of the safety of the party and of the discomfiture of the blacks.

The lads saw the force of Yarloo's argument. A big fire was lit, as if in preparation for spending the night, and then the three men took the precious water, a little tucker, and as few personal belongings as possible, and set out in the direction of Sidcotinga Station, lead by the unerring instinct of their black companion. It was well that they did so. During the hours of moonlight, a small band of Musgrave n.i.g.g.e.rs crept round the camp and remained in hiding. But directly the moon set, they advanced towards the dying fire, with spears poised and boomerangs ready for instant and deadly use. What would have happened if any hated white man had been asleep in that camp can be better imagined than described. No one would have been left alive. But, finding their prey had escaped, the would-be murderers vented their rage upon the saddles and pack-bags, tore them to shreds and threw them into the flames, and scattered into the fire as much of the provisions as was left after they had gorged themselves. They did not attempt to follow the three white men in the dark, and next day the little marauding band went after their fellows and joined them on the way to the Musgrave Ranges. All except one, and we will hear more of him later.

CHAPTER X

A Sandstorm

By Yarloo's faithfulness and forethought the little party had escaped death at the hands of wild savages, but a more deadly peril was waiting for them. It is one thing to fight with a human enemy, but quite another to fight with one which is not human. The lads were soon to see that the most terrible disasters of the desert are caused, not by wild and fiendishly cruel natives who follow silently day after day and then wreak their hatred on the traveller in the most unexpected way, but by grim Nature herself. Nature was their greatest, their most merciless, their most unconquerable enemy. They were soon to have an ill.u.s.tration of her power.

On the night when their camp was raided, the three men walked till the moon set and then lay down to sleep. They did not light a fire for fear of showing the blacks where they were, but just scooped hollows in the warm sand and stretched themselves out with a camp-sheet as their only bed-clothes, for they had left everything else behind them. The white boys were soon asleep, but Yarloo kept himself awake all night to watch. It was one of the hardest things the boy had ever done, for he was very tired and the heavy warm night made him drowsy. His simple mind fixed itself on one thing with all the determination of his nature; he had one purpose and one purpose only in life just then, and that was to preserve Boss Stobart's son from death, and he kept himself awake by sheer will-power. But when the morning star rose above the eastern horizon, red and throbbing, the tired-out black-fellow knew that his weary watch was over. He flopped down on the sand and was instantly asleep.

The close night was followed by a sultry dawn. Instead of the sparklingly clear pale sky in the east which usually heralds the rising of the sun, a dull haze made everything appear heavy and listless. The air was warm and still, but not light and dry as it generally is in the desert, and it was so heavy that every breath was an effort, and the slightest movement caused perspiration to break out all over the body.

The boys woke up with a most uncomfortable feeling of oppression. They were hot and thirsty, yet they dared not touch the canteen of water.

Although the sun had not risen, the heat seemed to be greater than they had ever known it before in the open air, and they lay and fanned their faces and fought the flies which were swarming around them.

When the sun rose, it showed a few little white clouds like puffs of steam, low down in the northern sky, and hiding the distant Musgrave Ranges from view. The sight of clouds is so unusual in Central Australia that the boys remarked about it to one another, and were amazed to see the difference which occurred in less than half an hour.

The clouds had indeed risen and increased greatly during that short time. Instead of a few separate clouds, a big solid bank was now spreading all over the horizon, and huge pillars of white were stretching out from the main ma.s.s, far up into the sky.

Yarloo slept late, but when he woke up, he too stood and watched the rising clouds. He evidently did not like the look of things, for he shook his head, and, in reply to a question from Sax, replied:

"Me no like it. Me think it storm come up."

To the hot and thirsty white boys the word "storm" had only one meaning, and they uttered it together: "Rain!"

Yarloo smiled. "Neh," he replied. "Rain no come up. Me think it wind. P'raps sand. Me no like it." He set about building a little fire for breakfast, and though his companions were not in the least bit hungry, they followed his example and ate some damper and dried meat.

Each man was allowed half a quart-pot of tea. Sax and Vaughan drank theirs with the meal, but Yarloo took a few sips and then put his quart-pot away in a safe place.

There was nothing to do all morning. Yarloo again made a little sun-shelter, but this became unnecessary after about ten o'clock, because by that time the rising clouds had covered the face of the sun.

With every succeeding hour the oppressive heat seemed to get more and more unbearable. There was not a breath of wind. It was as if a lot of thick blankets were slowly smothering every living creature on the earth. The clouds were no longer white, except at the front edges and in places where a few great puffs bulged out. The rest was grey, getting darker and darker till it was near the horizon, and then it turned to brown. This brown looked like a huge curtain hung from the sky and trailing over the earth. Now and again it was lit up by flashes of lurid red, for all the world as if a furnace were roaring behind that curtain.

The air was absolutely still, deathlike still, and a sound which was exactly like the roaring of a furnace came out of the north, with an occasional louder boom when the pent-up fury of the storm burst through the brown cloud. In reality, the sound was made by millions of particles of sand being hurtled through the air by an electric storm.

The sound came nearer. The clouds were completely overhead now, from north to south, from east to west. There was not a patch of blue to be seen. The panting earth waited in abject fear. A puff of wind came, hot and stifling, as if an oven door had suddenly been opened. It pa.s.sed over the mulgas, making them sigh and moan, and then was gone again, leaving the same breathless stillness. Another puff, this time cool and fresh. It also pa.s.sed away and left the men with dread in their hearts--the dread of an unknown, unseen foe.

The storm was very near. Sax was watching it so intently that he jumped round suddenly when Yarloo touched him on the arm. The black-fellow was pointing to the canteen. "Drink, little drop," he said, and pointed to the approaching curtain of brown sand. He evidently meant that the boys would be better able to stand against the storm if they had a drink beforehand, so Sax motioned to Vaughan and poured a little water out into the two pannikins. Neither of them spoke. They were overawed by the might, the majesty, the mystery of Nature.

Vaughan drank his water and lay down under the shelter. Sax did not screw the top on the canteen for a moment, intending to pour a few drops back again when he had finished. He held his hand over the hole in the canteen and started to drink from his pannikin.

Suddenly the storm burst on them. Sax heard a terrific rushing sound and looked round quickly. He was at once blinded as completely as if an actual thick brown curtain had been blown around his head. At the same time, some tremendous force caught him, nearly lifted him off the ground, and threw him down sprawling on the sand several yards away.

The pannikin was wrenched from his hand, and the canteen--what of the canteen?

Sax lay stunned for a moment, and then his first and only thought was the canteen. He tried to crawl, but every effort on his part only gave the enormous pressure of wind opportunity to drive him back, for as soon as he lifted his head, it was caught and twisted as if some soft strangling folds of cloth were being pulled around it from behind.

The light of the sun was blotted out completely, and it was as dark as a starless midnight. A screaming sound filled the boy's ears: the yelling of the storm, the laughter of the furies, the shrill shouts of fiends. He had to shield his mouth in order to breathe, and even then a fine dust choked his throat, and he would have coughed and vomited up his very life if he had not turned his back to the storm. Enormous quant.i.ties of sand were crowding the gale.

Have you ever stood under a waterfall and let a solid column of water fall on you from a height? You can stand there only for a moment, because the power of even a liquid is greater than the strength of man.

But here, in the desert, three exhausted men were fighting for their lives with sand; sand, as solid as it could possibly be without being actually fixed; sand, as hard as it could possibly be, and yet be driven by the wind. The electric gale of wind had scooped the surface off a thousand miles of desert, and was flinging it at three puny human beings.

It was impossible to face the onslaught. Sax turned against the storm and tried to crawl backwards. At all costs he must find the canteen.

He had no thought but this: the canteen! the canteen! Three lives depended on those drops of precious liquid. Were they safe? He crawled backwards inch by inch. But he had lost all sense of direction. The stinging, stifling sand, the shrill-screaming wind, the pitch-black whirling darkness; how could a man possibly tell where he was going?

Stobart's senses were all numb with the buffeting of the storm, but he suddenly felt that one of his legs was being held. He tried to kick free but was pulled backwards, and then something flapped and covered him. There was instant peace. He had found a shelter. Outside this unknown something which covered him the gale raged past in impotent fury. He was safe. An arm gripped his body and held him close.

The sudden reaction from fighting for his life to this secure peace was too much for the overwrought boy. He did not bother to find out who or what had saved him; he sank down, down, down into unconsciousness, and as the peaceful darkness closed over his mind, he muttered the words: "Canteen, canteen, canteen."

No one heard. No one could possibly hear in such a storm, not even the man who was holding him so closely. It was Yarloo. The boy had found his master's son, and had covered his head with a coat, and was now holding the unconscious form in his arms, while Sax drew long, unhindered breaths.

The storm pa.s.sed. It had come upon them suddenly, and it went away in the same manner. There was very little lessening of its fury to tell of the approaching end, but the air grew lighter all at once, the sounds got fainter quickly, and there was now no longer any stinging sand. The brown curtain pa.s.sed on, trailing its fringe over the desert, and the back of it could be seen as distinctly as the front had been a short half-hour before.

A short half-hour before? Yes. The sandstorm had lasted barely thirty minutes. It was so local, that Mick, riding along towards Sidcotinga Station only forty miles away, knew nothing about it. Such tremendous fury as these electric storms display is possible only when they concentrate their power on a very small area. This one had probably swept across a thousand miles of desert, and might go on for a thousand more before it spent itself. It had come across the great tableland behind the Musgrave Ranges, had been brought to a narrow point down one of the gorges in the mountains, and had hurled itself at the three defenceless men. It was a messenger of death from the Musgrave Ranges, the mysterious, dreaded, fascinating Musgrave Ranges.

The air behind the storm was cool and bright and clean. Not a spot of rain had fallen, but there was the same new-washed freshness about everything which comes after a sudden summer shower. The blue of the sky seemed clearer and more flawless than it had ever seemed before, in contrast with the depressing sultriness of the morning, and even the sun, shining down without the thinnest veil to lessen its fiery strength, seemed to look with a less unfriendly eye than usual.

And what did it see? Vaughan had been under the sun-shelter when the storm broke. The first gust had blown the flimsy structure down flat, and the weight of sand, which poured immediately on to it, prevented it from being blown away. The frightened white boy had been pinned under the fallen boughs and had been unable to get free while the storm lasted. It had been a fortunate accident for him, for he was compelled to lie still, in perfect safety, while the gale surged over him, instead of trying, as his friend Sax had done, to match his puny strength against it.

Poor Sax had been absolutely winded. In his anxiety to find the canteen, he had exhausted his strength in fighting the storm, and had no power left to breathe in such a stifling atmosphere. He might easily have been choked if Yarloo had not found him.

The native was desert born and bred, and knew how to act in every contingency that could possibly occur in the bush. He had seen Sax blown down with the first effort of the storm, and though he himself could neither see nor hear, because of the sand and wind, he had gradually forced his way towards his master's son, with a sure instinct which did not stop to wonder what he was doing or why he was doing it.

He had found him at last, and had held his unconscious body tight, shielding it with his coat and with his own body till the gale should pa.s.s over.

A few minutes afterwards, while Vaughan was fighting his way out of the broken-down sun-shelter, and Yarloo was bending over the still body of the other white boy, Sax opened his eyes.

"The canteen," he mumbled. "The canteen."

His friends thought that he wanted a drink, and Vaughan looked round for the canteen. It was nowhere to be seen. Sax was not really hurt, and his anxiety restored him to full consciousness in a minute or two.

He sat up and watched Vaughan hunting round for their most precious possession, the canteen. At last he staggered to his feet, tottered about for a step or two because his head was so dizzy, and then began to help in the search. He did not dare to tell the others what he feared, but when he finally stumbled against it, half buried in the sand about twenty yards away from camp, he found that the worst had happened.

The canteen was empty.

Sax had not screwed down the metal cap when the water-carrier had been caught by the wind and hurled along the ground. For several minutes its own smoothness had kept it moving, and had prevented it from lodging against anything and being buried, but each roll and jolt had spilt some of the water, till finally every drop had been wasted on the parched sand. Then, when all the harm which was possible had been done, the useless thing had jammed up against a dead mulga root and had been slowly covered with sand.