No More Learning

When we moved off under the full
moon we were four couples, one triplet, and Mr. Saumarez rode with the
Copleigh girls, and I loitered at the tail of the procession, wondering
with whom Saumarez would ride home. Every one was happy and contented;
but we all felt that things were going to happen. We rode slowly: and
it was nearly midnight before we reached the old tomb, facing the ruined
tank, in the decayed gardens where we were going to eat and drink. I
was late in coming up; and before I went into the garden, I saw that the
horizon to the north carried a faint, dun-colored feather. But no one
would have thanked me for spoiling so well-managed an entertainment as
this picnic--and a dust-storm, more or less, does no great harm.

We gathered by the tank. Some one had brought out a banjo--which is a
most sentimental instrument--and three or four of us sang.

You must not laugh at this. Our amusements in out-of-the-way Stations
are very few indeed. Then we talked in groups or together, lying under
the trees, with the sun-baked roses dropping their petals on our feet,
until supper was ready. It was a beautiful supper, as cold and as iced
as you could wish; and we stayed long over it.

I had felt that the air was growing hotter and hotter; but nobody
seemed to notice it until the moon went out and a burning hot wind began
lashing the orange-trees with a sound like the noise of the sea. Before
we knew where we were, the dust-storm was on us, and everything was
roaring, whirling darkness. The supper-table was blown bodily into the
tank.
We were afraid of staying anywhere near the old tomb for fear it
might be blown down. So we felt our way to the orange-trees where the
horses were picketed and waited for the storm to blow over. Then the
little light that was left vanished, and you could not see your hand
before your face. The air was heavy with dust and sand from the bed
of the river, that filled boots and pockets and drifted down necks and
coated eyebrows and moustaches. It was one of the worst dust-storms of
the year.

We were all huddled together close to the trembling horses, with the
thunder clattering overhead, and the lightning spurting like water from
a sluice, all ways at once. There was no danger, of course, unless the
horses broke loose. I was standing with my head downward and my hands
over my mouth, hearing the trees thrashing each other. I could not see
who was next me till the flashes came.

Then I found that I was packed near Saumarez and the eldest Miss
Copleigh, with my own horse just in front of me. I recognized the eldest
Miss Copleigh, because she had a pagri round her helmet, and the younger
had not. All the electricity in the air had gone into my body and I was
quivering and tingling from head to foot--exactly as a corn shoots and
tingles before rain. It was a grand storm.

The wind seemed to be picking up the earth and pitching it to leeward in
great heaps; and the heat beat up from the ground like the heat of the
Day of Judgment.

The storm lulled slightly after the first half-hour, and I heard a
despairing little voice close to my ear, saying to itself, quietly and
softly, as if some lost soul were flying about with the wind: "O my
God! " Then the younger Miss Copleigh stumbled into my arms, saying:
"Where is my horse?