The Pulaskian., 1916-09-15
CHAPTER XVI.
In the Teeth of the Storm.

In the Teeth of the Storm.
 During the first night of that great march southward they had sung lus- tily. Now they were silent. No man spoke even to his neighbor. From time to time they exchanged glances- lightning, stealthy glances, which passed unnoticed. But that was all It was the only sign that they were still men.
 The last village lay behind them. Two hundred miles away there was Sidi-bel-Abbes. In those two hundred miles there had been many things and eight days Eight days! They had ceased to count. The milestones had disappeared. Their memories were blank. Mechanically as each dis tance of ten kilometers was forced be- hind them they dropped stupidly into the burning sand and five minutes later mechanically rose and went on again. At night their white camps stretched like a string of pearls into the darkness, and the bivouac fires shone brightly, but they did not sleep. They sat, huddled together for shelter against the blasting cold of the des- or at one another. Before the dawn broke they marched on again. Their eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot with the sand and the glare of the sun. But they neither cursed nor com plained. Only from time to time they with that smoldering, searching inter- rogation, "Is it yet?"
 The day was cloudless. Since dawn no shadow had crossed the brazen monotony of withered azure. Yet there was darkness in the air as though light great ball of the sun had sunk behind yellow, transparent veil of smolder- ing, scorching ruin. Suddenly to the southeast the darkness gathered; the formless gloom lowering above the slow-moving line swept together in one stupendous shadow which rushed down upon them. Colonel Destinn gall loped furiously along the wavering, stricken line of men.
 "Campez! campez! Each man for himselfw
 Then it was upon them. The sun was plotted out The sand was every where. It came like blast out of heps furnace and crept into their eyes. their mouths, their lungs, their very hearts. It eddied round their feet, mounting steadily to their knees, and around them there shrieked the hurri- cane itself, an awful army of articu- late, destroying myriads.
 In that first moment Farquhar reeled forward, instinctively fighting the gall ing storm with the fierce physical mad ness of body goaded by intolerable torture, then he dropped quietly to his knees and waited for the end. He heard the scream of horse in terror, and a thud as of something falling close beside him, but he remained in- different. Stubbornly, doggedly, he awaited the final consummation of his release.
 Then something touched him. He awoke with a curse of resentful agony. A hand had groped through the dark ness. It gripped him, and he dragged himself to his feet, lifting the heavy, invisible body with him. The sand beat down upon them. He turned his back to the storm. He stamped the shifting, whirling mass under his feet, and with a woman's generous tender ness sheltered the motionless unknown man against his shoulders. No word was spoken. Eternities of suffering, in which each moment was the last, bore down upon him. There was no time in that hideous revolving obscur- ity-all the landmarks of life had beer swept away, and he was pitted against the full force of death itself. He dropped back. With an effort he gath cred the unconscious man closer, keep ing his face uppermost. Then he lay still, wondering if this were death. :. i.