It must have been about four in the morning that I woke, with the same sort of feeling of something being different as you have when a ship stops at night, and the absence of the engines’ murmur, which kept you awake the first night or two, now wakes you up seeking the accustomed sound. Then I realized that the wind had stopped. I unlaced the tent flies to see if the sky was cloudy or clear, but as I came out I heard a rushing sound and a gust beat on the tent as if it would tear it from its pegs. A thick whirl of sand filled the air, and the rush of it woke the others. “What’s up?” called out Wrexham as I struggled with the flies. I explained as best I could, and while doing so smelt the unmistakable fresh smell of rain. “By Jove, I believe it’s rain coming up!” I called out, and pulled the flies apart again. The wind dropped, and was succeeded by a steady patter on the tent wall. It got harder and harder and steadier and steadier, and we heard the men stirring. “Come on!” called Wrexham, “all hands outside with every d----d pot and pan you can get and see if we can fill ’em.” By the light of the rain-dimmed hurricane-lamp I could see Firoz spreading out the cooking-pots, and Payindah taking advantage of the wind stopping to peg out a waterproof-sheet. Cold as it was, we stood out in the rain for the sheer pleasure of feeling the sand being washed off our faces and our skins expanding again. Our scanty water ration had allowed nothing for washing. It rained more or less continuously for nearly two hours, and stopped just as the dawn was breaking. After it had gone on for a quarter of an hour or so, we three, with Firoz carrying our two spades and a pick, went to the far end where we had made the dam. We already found a thin trickle of water reaching it and apparently being sucked up by the sand. But a little later the dam had bound together, and we stood there in the rain watching with delighted eyes the growth of a small black pool that spread and spread until the end of it passed out of the misty halo of light. Wrexham stayed there till dawn like a Dutchman saving a dyke, getting up at intervals with Firoz to heap more and more sand on to the outer and upper sides of his dam. “Not bad calculations,” he said, when the growing dawn revealed to us a pool of water--somewhat sandy, but still water--some thirty feet long, as much as three feet wide in places, and nearly a foot deep in the middle of the deepest pool. “I should say there was at least one hundred and fifty gallons there.” Our first care was to fill up every utensil we had, and from them, straining through several thicknesses of cloth, to replenish all the tanks. Then we gave the camels as much as they could swallow. You could almost see the poor beasts swelling as they drank. Even after that there was a certain amount left, rather sandy and muddy. Wrexham looked at it.