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.
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