Not much to a man awake, and with open eyes. In such a situation there
might be discomfort, but no danger.
Different, however, was it with the slumbering castaways. Over them a
peril was suspended, a real peril of which perhaps on that night not one
of them was dreaming, and in which perhaps not one of them would have
put belief but for the experience of it they were destined to be taught
before the morning.
Could an eye have looked upon them as they lay, it would have beheld a
picture sufficiently suggestive of danger. It would have seen four
human figures stretched along the bottom of a narrow ravine,
longitudinally aligned with one another, their heads all turned one way,
and in point of elevation slightly _en echelon_, it would have noted
that these forms were asleep, that they were already half buried in
sand, which, apparently descending from the clouds was still settling
around them; and that, unless one or other of them awoke, all four must
certainly become "smoored."
What does this mean? Merely a slight inconvenience arising from having
the mouth, ears, and nostrils obstructed by sand, which a little
choking, and sneezing, and coughing would soon remove.
Ask the Highland shepherd who has imprudently gone to sleep under the
"blowin' sna"; question the Scandinavian, whose calling compels him to
encamp on the open "fjeld"; interrogate Swede or Norwegian, Finn or
Lapp, and you may discover the danger of being "smoored."
That would be in the snow, the light, vascular, porous, permeable snow,
under which a human being may move, and through which he may breathe,
though tons of it may be superpoised above his body, the snow that,
while imprisoning its victim, also gives him warmth, and affords him
shelter, perilous as that shelter may be.
Ask the Arab what it is to be "smoored" by sand; question the wild
Bedouin of the Bled-el-Jereed, the Tuarick and Tiboo of the Eastern
Desert, they will tell you it is danger, often death!
Little dreamt the four sleepers as they lay unconscious under that swirl
of sand, little even would they have suspected, if awake, that there was
danger in the situation.
There was for all that a danger, great as it was imminent; the danger,
not only of their being "smoored", but stifled, suffocated, buried
fathoms deep under the sands of the Saara; for fathoms deep will often
be the drift of a single night.
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?