And though whirls and air-eddies, sand-laden, snatched viciously at them, they won along the beach.
That was lathering toil, burdened as they were, stumbling over driftwood and into holes, laboring forward, hardly able to distinguish more than the rising, falling line of white that marked the surf.
Voices of water and of wind conclamantly shouted, as if all the devils of the Moslem Hell had been turned loose to snatch and rave at them.
Heat, stifle, sand caught them by the throat; the breath wheezed in their lungs; and on their faces sweat and sand pasted itself into a kind of sticky mud.
After fifteen minutes of this struggle the Master paused.

He dropped Abd el Rahman's shoulders, and Rrisa the Sheik's feet, while Leclair stood silently bowed with the weight of Lebon and of the belaboring storm.
"_Oooo-eeee! Oooooeeee! Oooooo-eeee!_" the Master hailed, three long times.

An answering shout came back, faintly, from the black.

The Master bent, assured himself the old Sheik's mouth and nose were still covered by the hood of the burnous, and cried: "Forward!" And the three men stumbled on and on.
Five minutes later the Master once more paused.
"Remember, both of you," he cautioned, "not one word of the find!" "The Great Pearl Star ?" asked Leclair gruntingly.
Their voices were almost inaudible to each other in that mad tumult.
"That is to be a secret, my Captain ?" "Between us three; yes.

Let that be understood!" "I pledge my honor to it!" cried the Frenchman.