“If I thought that would last the day, I would suggest stopping here till to-morrow to give the camels a rest and another drink, but what doesn’t evaporate will soak through the dam, so it would be no score. We’d better use what’s left for a bath.” So we did, and felt new men once more. The two Punjabis followed, but Sadiq, beyond washing his face and hands, did not appear interested. The removal of the sand crust from his face seemed quite enough ablutions in his estimation. We started rather later than usual, and, although the rain had ceased, the sky was yet heavy with clouds. The air was clear, but there was no great visibility in the horizon. Once we left the rock where we had camped, the rain seemed to have made little difference to the sands, save that the upper surface was somewhat caked, but it was refreshing to breathe air that was air and not part sand. There was only a gentle breeze, and it was free from the irritating particles that we had been breathing for the last few days. The dunes were still very high, despite Wrexham’s opinion that they ought to be getting lower. I estimated that the majority of them were little under eighty feet in height most of that day. There was a very slight steaminess in the air as the sun warmed, but as the sky cleared we began to see farther and farther. Men and beasts alike stepped out briskly, for the downpour had put new life into us all. As we went, we climbed each fresh dune in the hope of seeing a new glimpse of the hills in front, but for a long time saw nothing beyond the desert’s yellow edge. A thick bank of cloud still hung to the northeast, although the sky above us was by now clear blue. We halted about one o’clock, and it was after that, as the sun began to start down on his journey westward, that we were rewarded by our first view of the hills. Forsyth was the first to draw our attention to the clouds to the northeast having thinned considerably, and a little later Payindah called to me as we topped a dune. Wrexham was down in the dip in front. “Look, sahib, those be surely hills in front!” I looked, and there was a rift in the cloud-bank that had baffled us all day, and in it showed hills, real, unmistakable, blue-shadowed hills, such as one sees from the northern stations of India as you look out over the sunburnt expanse of plain. They were a long way off--forty or fifty miles, I estimated--although in the clean, rain-washed air they looked closer with the sun falling directly upon them. These must be the hills below the high snow we had seen. “Surely, Payindah, hills like the hills of the Punjab.” I called to Wrexham breasting the slope ahead with the leading camels: “Hills, John! Hills ahead!” He stopped as I called, and then, as my words reached him, he broke into something like a run up the steep slope and stopped. Then I saw his glasses come out. I slithered down the dune I was on, and raced up to him, picking up Forsyth as I went.