Perhaps, however, this suffering did us a service, since otherwise
exhaustion, thirst, and dust might have overwhelmed our senses, and
caused us to fall into a sleep from which we never should have awakened.
Yet at the time we were not grateful to it, for at last the agony became
almost unbearable. Indeed, Orme told me afterwards that the last thing
he could remember was a quaint fancy that he had made a colossal fortune
by selling the secret of a new torture to the Chinese--that of hot sand
driven on to the victim by a continuous blast of hot air.

After a while we lost count of time, nor was it until later that we
learned that the storm endured for full twenty hours, during the latter
part of which, notwithstanding our manifold sufferings, we must have
become more or less insensible. At any rate, at one moment I remembered
the awful roar and the stinging of the sand whips, followed by a kind
of vision of the face of my son--that beloved, long-lost son whom I had
sought for so many years, and for whose sake I endured all these things.
Then, without any interval, as it were, I felt my limbs being scorched
as though by hot irons or through a burning-glass, and with a fearful
effort staggered up to find that the storm had passed, and that the
furious sun was blistering my excoriated skin. Rubbing the caked dirt
from my eyes, I looked down to see two mounds like those of graves, out
of which projected legs that had been white. Just then one pair of legs,
the longer pair, stirred, the sand heaved up convulsively, and, uttering
wandering words in a choky voice, there arose the figure of Oliver Orme.

For a moment we stood and stared at each other, and strange spectacles
we were.

"Is he dead?" muttered Orme, pointing to the still buried Higgs.