“We looked anxiously toward the tent; it was yet a hundred yards off, or more. Meanwhile the gusts grew hotter and more violent, and it was only by repeated efforts that we could urge our beasts forward. The horizon rapidly darkened to a deep violet line, and seemed to draw in like a curtain on every side, while at the same time a stifling blast, as though from some enormous oven opening right on our path, blew steadily under the gloom; our camels, too, began, in spite of all we could do, to turn round and round and bend their knees, preparing to lie down. The simoom was fairly upon us. “Of course we had followed our Arabs’ example by muffling our faces, and now with blows and kicks we forced the staggering animals onward to the only asylum within reach. So dark was the atmosphere, and so burning the heat, that it seemed that hell had risen from the earth, or descended from above. But we were yet in time, and at the moment when the worst of the concentrated poison-blast was coming around, we were already prostrate, one and all, within the tent, with our heads well wrapped up, almost suffocated, indeed, but safe; while our camels lay without like dead, their long necks stretched out on the sand, awaiting the passing of the gale. “On our first arrival the tent contained a solitary Bedouin woman, whose husband was away with his camels in the Wady Sirhan. When she saw five handsome men like us rush thus suddenly into her dwelling without a word of leave or salutation, she very properly set up a scream to the tune of the four crown pleas—murder, arson, robbery, and I know not what else. Salim hastened to reassure her by calling out ‘friends,’ and without more words threw himself flat on the ground. All followed his example in silence. “We remained thus for about ten minutes, during which a still heat like that of red-hot iron slowly passing over us was alone to be felt. Then the tent walls began again to flap in the returning gusts, and announced that the worst of the simoom had gone by. We got up, half dead with exhaustion, and unmuffled our faces. My comrades appeared more like corpses than living men, and so, I suppose, did I. However, I could not forbear, in spite of warnings, to step out and look at the camels; they were still lying flat as though they had been shot. The air was yet darkish, but before long it brightened up to its usual dazzling clearness. During the whole time that the simoom lasted, the atmosphere was entirely free from sand or dust, so that I hardly know how to account for its singular obscurity.”