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A quarter of the battalion had already fallen, and lay strewn on the shingle. The rapidity of their advance had exhausted the Soudanese, and Lewis ordered Nason to halt under cover of the sandhills for a few minutes, so that the soldiers might get their breath before the final effort.
Behind some very low scattered sandhills that form it, fronting a mangrove flat, we beheld great numbers of dead turtles, that seemed to have repaired thither of their own accord to die. They were lying on their bellies, with their shells for the most part uninjured, though some were turned over, and showed other signs of visits from the natives.
"What would you say if we had to go into camp to-night without water?" "Gracious!" exclaimed Phillips, looking around at the sandhills, which now shut them in on all sides. "The prospect of finding a stream or a spring is not very flattering, is it? I wish we could find one now, for the water in my canteen is just ready to boil."
A narrow belt of open country, overgrown with succulent herbage, fringes the margin of the lake; beyond it is dense scrub, with occasional patches of grass; beyond that, sand, sandhills, and spinifex. In the distance can be seen flat-topped hills and bluffs, and rising ground which encloses the hollow of the lake.
By digging we easily obtained a quantity of water, but it was all pure brine and utterly useless. After this we met lake-bed after lake-bed, all in a region of dense scrubs and sandhills for sixty miles, some were small, some large, though none of the size of the first one.
Conneally was stunned by his sorrow. He stopped working altogether, ceased to think, even to feel. Men avoided him with instinctive reverence at first, and afterwards with fear, as he wandered, muttering to himself, among the sandhills and along the beach. After a while the power of thought and a sense of the outward things of life returned to him.
Now, a generation later, a great city covers the sandhills on the west, a growing town lies along the muddy shallows of the east; steamboats pant continually between them from before sunrise till the small hours of the morning; lines of great sea-going ships lie ranged at anchor; colours fly upon the islands; and from all around the hum of corporate life, of beaten bells, and steam, and running carriages, goes cheerily abroad in the sunshine.
Without a second's thought, he darted wildly out of the ranks, and rushed after the butterfly, cap in hand. It led him a pretty chase, over sandhills and shore, for five minutes. He was just on the point of catching it at last, when he suddenly felt a heavy hand laid upon his shoulder, and looking round, he saw the corporal of the company and several soldiers come to arrest him.
At the end of half a minute he raised the blanket three times in quick succession, and three balloon-shaped clouds floated off over the sandhills. Waiting half a minute, he lifted the blanket twice, and two more little clouds arose.
The eternal roaring of the sea seemed to be subdued, as if even it felt awed by the stillness of the June night. The sand on which he lay was damped with dew. Only the sharp cry of the corncrake broke the solemnity of the night. He rose, and, peering anxiously before him as each fresh stretch of his way became visible, crossed the sandhills.
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