Bonners Ferry herald. [volume] (Bonners Ferry, Idaho) 1904-current, 1916-09-22
CHAPTER XVI.
In the Teeth of the Storm.


During the first night of that great
march southwark 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.
1t 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
lance of ten kilometers was forced be-
hind them they dropped stupidity 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-
ert night, and stared in front of them,
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
planned. Only from time to time they
glanced at one another, and always
with that smoldering, searching inter
rogation, SIS it YETI"
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
had burned up light itself, and the
great ball of the sun had sunk behind
a 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 gal
loped furiously along the wavering
stricken line of men.
"Campezl campezl Each man for
himselfr'
Then it was upon them. The sun
was blotted out. The sand was every
where 1t came like blast out Of
hell's furnace and crept into their eyes
their mouths, their lungs, their very
hearts. 1t 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 a 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 contamination of his
release.
Then something touched him. He
awoke with a curse Of resentful agony.
A hand had CROPPED through the dark
ness. 1t 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 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 been
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. . .