Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/188

 He strove to shake off this oppressive influence; for a little while he was very busy, his mind distracted with the business of training in a position to repel the expected attack the two gatlings with which the expedition was provided. But when that had been attended to he became again conscious of the ominous foreboding in the air; the day was gravid with portents of terror.

Frowning, he stared out into the east. For a moment he saw nothing amiss; the desert stretched away, as always a sea of sand, desolate, saffron and a-quiver with the oblique rays of the rising sun. Here and there little puff balls of smoke would rise—white clouds no bigger than a man's hand—tremble and dissipate; their appearance followed at an interval by the far, spiteful crack of a native rifle.

Only, he felt as though a copper-colored film had been bound across his eyes; he saw all things as through a tinted glass, yellow. The day seemed to have turned darksome at the dawn. And the silence was almost terrible, more impressive than ever it had been, with a sense of a tangible presence, mute, invisible, threatening. In its profound immensity, the rattle of shots was like the shrill piping of a child's voice in the roar of a hurricane.

But he had no time for conjecture. Mahmud returned to his side, reporting that all was prepared for the sally out to the coast. O'Rourke nodded sternly in his preoccupation.

"Rejoin the party immediately," he ordered. "Place Madame la Princesse and Monsieur l'Empereur in the middle of the square. Then await my coming with these others."

To the south and north the firing of the natives had dwindled out and died completely. Such, too, was the case in the west; where it was hardly noticeable. Only in the east it seemed redoubled, concentrated, fiendishly accurate. On