No More Learning

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? Get my horse. I want to go home. I WANT to go home.
Take me home. "

I thought that the lightning and the black darkness had frightened her;
so I said there was no danger, but she must wait till the storm blew
over. She answered: "It is not THAT! It is not THAT! I want to go home!
O take me away from here! "

I said that she could not go till the light came; but I felt her brush
past me and go away. It was too dark to see where. Then the whole sky
was split open with one tremendous flash, as if the end of the world
were coming, and all the women shrieked.

Almost directly after this, I felt a man's hand on my shoulder and heard
Saumarez bellowing in my ear. Through the rattling of the trees and
howling of the wind, I did not catch his words at once, but at last
I heard him say: "I've proposed to the wrong one! What shall I do?