found it was impossible to get up—he was unable to carry out his plan.
He looked around him. In the car the doctor, quite exhausted, his arms folded across his chest, was gazing into space, with a fixed and lack-luster look. Kennedy was really alarming, and kept shaking his head from side to side like a wild beast in a cage. Suddenly the Scot's glance fell upon his carbine, the stock of which protruded over the side of the car.
"Ha, ha!" he cried, raising himself by an almost superhuman effort. He made a dart to secure the gun; maddened and foolish, he directed the muzzle to his mouth.
"Sir, sir! "cried Joe, throwing himself upon Kennedy.
They struggled furiously together.
"Go away, or I will kill you!" cried Kennedy.
But Joe held him with all his force, and thus they contended, without the doctor appearing to observe them, for nearly a minute. In the struggle the carbine suddenly exploded. At the noise of the discharge the doctor rose like a specter and looked around him.
"Down there; look there!" he cried.
He pointed to a certain point so energetically that Joe and Kennedy separated by mutual consent, and looked at him and then in the direction indicated.
The plain was agitated like a tempestuous sea. Waves of sand were tossed one upon the other in the midst of a fearful dust-cloud. An immense pillar of sand came from the southeast, whirling and eddying with tremendous swiftness. The sun disappeared behind a thick cloud, whose shade extended even to the "Victoria." The grains of fine sand glistened like liquid beads, and this rising sea gained upon them by degrees.
A swift beam of hope leaped from Doctor Ferguson's eyes.
"The simoon!" he cried.
"The simoon!" repeated Joe without understanding him.
"So much the better!" exclaimed Kennedy, with the anger of despair, so much the better—we shall die!"
"So much the better," replied the doctor, "for, on the contrary, we shall live." And he began to cast out the sand which ballasted the car.
