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
illustration 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 mass, 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
passed 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 passed 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
quantities 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 passed. 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 passed 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
pass 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.
When the truth fully dawned upon them, the two boys sat down on the
ground and stared hopelessly in front of them. Although they had been
in the North only for a brief period, they knew that they were face to
face with one of the most terrible things which could have happened to
them in the desert. A man can go without food for several days, but
water is an absolute daily necessity. The sandstorm had left the white
boys weak, and as they had already stinted themselves of water for the
last day and a half, they were in no condition to meet this new
calamity.
Gradually the sun exerted its old sway over the earth, and the boys
were obliged to seek some shade. They helped Yarloo rebuild the old
shelter, and sat down under it, with their only possessions--one
pannikin, one badly torn camp-sheet, and an empty canteen. Everything
else had been blown away or absolutely spoilt.
Towards the middle of the afternoon, when, nearly sixty miles to the
west of them, Mick was drawing near Sidcotinga Station, Yarloo went out
from the shelter for a few minutes. He had been very thoughtful for
the last hour, and had evidently just made up his mind on some
important matter. When he returned he was carrying his quart-pot,
which was a little more than a quarter full of tea. The boy had jammed
the pannikin lid on tight that morning and had hidden it in the sand,
and the storm had not done it any harm. He showed the tea to his
companions, but did not give the pot into their eager hands till he had
explained what he intended to do.
"Me go 'way," he said.
The white boys did not pay any attention to this remark. Here was
something to drink, and they were parched with thirst.
"Me go 'way," repeated Yarloo. "Me come back by'm bye.... P'raps me
find um water ... p'raps me find um parakelia."
His companions did not reply. What did it matter? Why this "perhaps,
perhaps" when here was the certainty of at least a mouthful of tea for
each? But Yarloo waited for a moment or two, and then went on
patiently:
"Me come back to-morrow 'bout same time.... White boy stay here ... no
go 'way. No go 'way, mind.... Sax," he said timidly, using the name
for the first time, "Sax, you no go 'way, eh?"
"No. No. Of course we won't go away, Yarloo," was the impatient
answer. "But how long are you going to keep hold of that quart-pot?"
"Me come back to-morrow 'bout same time," said Yarloo slowly. "S'pose
me give it quart-pot, you no drink um till to-morrow sunrise? ...
to-morrow sunrise, eh?"
His meaning was perfectly clear. He was going to leave them the tea on
condition that they didn't touch it till sunrise next day. The boys
became angry at what they considered a foolish idea.
"What's the good of that to us?" asked Vaughan hastily.
"Yes," agreed Sax. "Whatever's the good of such a fool idea? ...
Besides, you've got no right to tell us when we're to have a drink and
when we're not to have a drink. I'm thirsty. I'm going to have my
share now.... Here, Yarloo, give me that quart-pot."
He held out his hand, but Yarloo stepped back. "Quart-pot belonga me,"
he said quietly.
The boy's statement was undoubtedly true. The tea was his, saved from
his fair breakfast allowance, and, if he was good enough to part with
it for the sake of the white boys, surely he had a right to dictate his
own terms. Sax and Vaughan at once saw their mistake and began to feel
a little foolish because of the attitude they had tried to take up.
Yarloo was evidently in grim earnest, for he repeated his former
question:
"S'pose me gib it quart-pot, you no drink um till to-morrow sunrise,
eh?"
"All right, Yarloo," agreed Sax. "We'll not drink it till sunrise
to-morrow.... But, look here," he exclaimed suddenly, realizing for
the first time the tremendous sacrifice the black-fellow was making.
"Look here! We mustn't take your tea. It's yours, Yarloo. Yours," he
repeated, in order to make his meaning clear.
But Yarloo had already begun to scrape a hole in the sand. When it was
deep enough, he put the precious quart-pot into it so that it could not
be spilt. "You belonga Boss Stobart," he said slowly. "Boss Stobart
good fella longa me."
He stood up when he had finished and looked at the two boys.
"Goo-bye," he said, and was turning to go, when something prompted Sax
to hold out his hand. Yarloo took it instantly and then shook
Vaughan's hand also,[1] and, in another minute, he was almost out of
sight amongst the ragged scrub.
[1] Blacks do not shake hands when they are in their wild state, but
they quickly pick up the habit from the white man.