"At the sands, of course!" says Nancy, with a toss of her head.
I am sorry again to detain you; but you really must hear the story of the sands, and the story of Rosanna-- for this reason, that the matter of the Diamond touches them both nearly.
But no one can Reach that Beautiful Country because of these Destroying Sands
"Oh," said Dorothy, when the shaggy man had read the sign aloud; "I've seen this desert before, and it's true no one can live who tries to walk upon the sands."
Most of the soil had been washed away or buried in drift after the removal of the trees; only where the streamlet ran down from the kettle a thick bed of moss and some ferns and little creeping bushes were still green among the
sand. Very close around the stockade--too close for defence, they said--the wood still flourished high and dense, all of fir on the land side, but towards the sea with a large admixture of live-oaks.
The beautiful salmon boat lay on the hard
sand, squashed flat as a pancake, while on it were perched French Frank's schooner and the Reindeer.
One can imagine them, covered with
sand, excited and disordered, running up the little street in the bright sunlight just as the shop folks were taking down their shutters and people were opening their bedroom windows.
Finally, down near the water's edge, Billina stuck her bill deep into the
sand, and then drew back and shivered.
There was not a variation in the surface of the soil, not a hillock of
sand, not a pebble, to relieve the gaze.
In the morning, after carefully returning the box to its hole and covering it over with
sand, I called my servants about me, snatched a hurried breakfast, mounted my horse, and started upon a forced march for Algiers.
Both shifted their postures slightly, but vain was the attempt to escape from the dull, aching contact of the
sand.
Nevertheless, whatever my start sprang from was prophetic; for, as I gazed, he started walking briskly in a bee-line towards us across the wide wet
sands. As he drew nearer and nearer I saw that he was dark and bearded, and that his eyes were marked with dark spectacles.
The
sand is entirely, or in greater part, siliceous; but some points are of a black colour, and from their glossy surface possess a metallic lustre.
"I propose to provide at Diana's Grove, as soon as it comes into my possession, an enormous amount of such
sand, and shall take an early occasion of pouring it into the well-hole, which it will in time choke.
I awoke early on the third morning after my return from Ashby Park--the sun was shining through the blind, and I thought how pleasant it would be to pass through the quiet town and take a solitary ramble on the
sands while half the world was in bed.
