The Boy Slaves

"All of ye do as you see me, and, I'll be your bail, ye'll sleep sound till the dawn o' the day. Good night!"

As Colin pronounced the salutation he sank down to the bottom of the ravine, where, stretched longitudinally, he might repose without the slightest danger of being awakened by slipping from his couch.

On seeing him thus disposed, the others only wondered they had not thought of the thing before.

They were too sleepy to speculate long upon their own thoughtlessness; and one after the other, imitating the example set them by the young Scotchman, laid their bodies lengthwise along the bottom of the ravine, and entered upon the enjoyment of a slumber from which all the kettle-drums in creation would scarce have awaked them.

CHAPTER XI.

'WARE THE SAND!

As the gully in which they had gone to rest was too narrow to permit of them lying side by side, they were disposed in a sort of lengthened chain, with their heads all turned in the same direction. The bottom of the ravine, as already stated, had a slight inclination; and they had, of course, placed themselves so that their heads should be higher than their feet.

The old sailor was at the lower end of this singular series, with the feet of Harry Blount just above the crown of his head. Above the head of Harry were the heels of Terence O'Connor; and, at the top of all, reclined Colin, – in the place where he had first stretched himself.

On account of the slope of the ground, the four were thus disposed in a sort of échelon formation, of which Old Bill was the base. They had dropped into their respective positions, one after the other, as they lay.

The sailor had been the last to commit himself to this curious couch; he was also the last to surrender to sleep. For some time after the others had become unconscious of outward impressions, he lay listening to the "sough" of the sea, and the sighing of the breeze, as it blew along the smooth sides of the sand-hills.

He did not remain awake for any great length of time. He was wearied, as well as his young comrades; and soon also yielded his spirit to the embrace of the god Somnus.

Before doing so, however, he had made an observation, – one of a character not likely to escape the notice of an old mariner such as he. He had become conscious that a storm was brewing in the sky. The sudden shadowing of the heavens; – the complete disappearance of the moon, leaving even the white landscape in darkness; – her red color as she went out of sight; – the increased noise caused by the roaring of the breakers; and the louder "swishing" of the wind itself, which began to blow in quick gusty puffs; all these sights and sounds admonished him that a gale was coming on.

He instinctively noted these signs; and on board ship would have heeded them, – so far as to have alarmed the sleeping watch, and counselled precaution.

But stretched upon terra firma – not so very firm had he but known it – between two huge hills, where he and his companions were tolerably well sheltered from the wind, it never occurred to the old salt, that they could be in any danger; and simply muttering to himself, "the storm be blowed!" he laid his weather-beaten face upon the pillow of soft sand, and delivered himself up to deep slumber.

The silent prediction of the sailor turned out a true forecast. Sure enough there came a storm; which, before the castaways had been half an hour asleep, increased to a tempest. It was one of those sudden uprisings of the elements common in all tropical countries, but especially so in the desert tracts of Arabia and Africa, – where the atmosphere, rarefied by heat, and becoming highly volatile, suddenly loses its equilibrium, and rushes like a destroying angel over the surface of the earth.

The phenomenon that had broken over the arenaceous couch, – upon which slept the four castaways, – was neither more nor less than a "sand-storm;" or, to give it its Arab title, a simoom.

The misty vapor that late hung suspended in the atmosphere had been swept away by the first puff of the wind; and its place was now occupied by a cloud equally dense, though perhaps not so constant, – a cloud of white sand lifted from the surface of the earth, and whirled high up towards heaven, – even far out over the waters of the ocean.

Had it been daylight, huge volumes, of what might have appeared dust, might have been seen rolling over the ridges of sand, – here swirling into rounded pillar-like shapes, that could easily have been mistaken for solid columns, standing for a time in one place, then stalking over the summits of the hills, or suddenly breaking into confused and cumbering masses; while the heavier particles, no longer kept in suspension by the rotatory whirl, might be seen spilling back towards the earth, like a sand-shower projected downward through some gigantic "screen."

In the midst of this turbulent tempest of wind and sand – with not a single drop of rain, – the castaways continued to sleep.

One might suppose – as did the old man-o'-war's-man before going to sleep – that they were not in any danger; not even as much as if their couch had been under the roof of a house, or strewn amid the leaves of the forest. There were no trees to be blown down upon them, no bricks nor large chimney-pots to come crashing through the ceiling, and crush them as they lay upon their beds.

What danger could there be among the "dunes?"

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 échelon– 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 should 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 Saära, 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?

CHAPTER XII.

A MYSTERIOUS NIGHTMARE

The four castaways had been asleep for a couple of hours, – that is, from the time that, following the example of the young Scotchman, they had stretched themselves along the bottom of the ravine. It was not quite an hour, however, since the commencement of the sand-storm; and yet in this short time the arenaceous dust had accumulated to the thickness of several inches upon their bodies; and a person passing the spot, or even stepping right over them, could not have told that four human beings were buried beneath, – that is, upon the supposition that they would have lain still, and not got startled from their slumbers by the foot thus treading upon them.

Perhaps it was a fortunate circumstance for them, that by such a contingency they might be awakened, and that by such they were awakened.

Otherwise their sleep might have been protracted into the still deeper sleep – from which there is no awaking.

All four had begun to feel – if any sensation while asleep can be so called – a sense of suffocation, accompanied by a heaviness of the limbs and torpidity in the joints, – as if some immense weight was pressing upon their bodies, that rendered it impossible for them to stir either toe or finger. It was a sensation similar to that so well known, and so much dreaded, under the name of nightmare. It may have been the very same; and was, perhaps, brought on as much by the extreme weariness they all felt, as by the superincumbent weight of the sand.

Their heads, lying higher than their bodies, were not so deeply buried under the drift; which, blown lightly over their faces, still permitted the atmosphere to pass through it. Otherwise their breathing would have been stopped altogether; and death must have been the necessary consequence.

Whether it was a genuine nightmare or no, it was accompanied by all the horrors of this phenomenon. As they afterwards declared, all four felt its influence, each in his own way dreaming of some fearful fascination from which he could make no effort to escape. Strange enough, their dreams were different. Harry Blount thought he was falling over a precipice; Colin that a gigantic ogre had got hold of and was going to eat him up; while the young Hibernian fancied himself in the midst of a conflagration, a dwelling house on fire, from which he could not get out!

Old Bill's delusion was more in keeping with their situation, – or at least with that out of which they had lately escaped. He simply supposed that he was submerged in the sea, and as he knew he could not swim, it was but natural for him to fancy that he was drowning.

Still, he could make no struggle; and, as he would have done this, whether able to swim or not, his dream did not exactly resemble the real thing.

The sailor was the first to escape from the uncomfortable incubus; though there was but an instant between the awakening of all. They were startled out of their sleep, one after another, in the order in which they lay, and inversely to that in which they had lain down.

Their awakening was as mysterious as the nightmare itself, and scarce relieved them from the horror which the latter had been occasioning.

All felt in turn, and in quick succession, a heavy crushing pressure, either on the limbs or body, which had the effect, not only to startle them from their sleep, but caused them considerable pain.

Twice was this pressure applied, almost exactly on the same spot, and with scarce a second's interval between the applications. It could not well have been repeated a third time with like exactness, even had such been the design of whatever creature was causing it; for, after the second squeeze, each had recovered sufficient consciousness to know he was in danger of being crushed, and make a desperate effort to withdraw himself.

The exclamations, proceeding from four sets of lips, told that all were still in the land of the living; but the confused questioning that followed did nothing towards elucidating the cause of that sudden and almost simultaneous uprising.

There was too much sneezing and coughing to permit of anything like clear or coherent speech. The shumu was still blowing. There was sand in the mouths and nostrils of all four, and dust in their eyes. Their talk more resembled the jibbering of apes, who had unwisely intruded into a snuff shop, than the conversation of four rational beings.

It was some time before any one of them could shape his speech, so as to be understood by the others; and, after all had at length succeeded in making themselves intelligible, it was found that each had the same story to tell. Each had felt two pressures on some part of his person; and had seen, though very indistinctly, some huge creature passing over him, – apparently a quadruped, though what sort of quadruped none of them could tell. All they knew was, that it was a gigantic, uncouth creature, with a narrow body and neck, and very long legs; and that it had feet there could be no doubt: since it was these that had pressed so heavily upon them.