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