The garden,
the beautiful, sheltered garden, scene of their delights, was being
ruthlessly destroyed, even as his life had been; it was expiring in
agony, even as he would shortly expire: to-morrow it would be
desolate, a shattered wreck under the dust, even as he, in a little
while--But something should be done first.
Leaving the doorway open, letting the dust-laden wind tear
shrieking through the silent house, he plunged into the roaring
darkness. He took the centre path that led straight to the compound
gate. The unhappy bushes and tortured branches of the trees, bent
and twisted by the onrushing wind, lashed his face and body as he
went down the path. He did not feel their stinging blows. On, on to
the desert he went blindly but steadily in the thick darkness.
When he got beyond the compound gate, out of the shelter of the
garden, the weight of the wind almost bore him down; but as he
faced its blast, his eyes saw, not so very far, out on the plain,
dull in the whirling mist, the dancing uncertain light of a carried
lantern. As the tiger darts forward on its prey, as the snake
springs to the attack, Hamilton leapt forward into the wall of wind
that faced him and ran at the dancing light.
Choked with sand, blinded, suffocated and breathless, but full of
power to kill, he was on it at last, and flung himself with sinewy
hands on the swaying, covered sedan chair, between the two bearers,
who, bewildered and helpless in the sudden storm, were groping
slowly across the plain.
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