Beyond them the black barren was filled with a dismal moaning.

Looking up, and yet seeing nothing in the darkness, Peter understood where the weird shriekings and ghostly cries came from.

It was the wind whipping itself up the side and over the top of the dune.
Jolly Roger listened, hearing only the convulsive sweep of that mighty force over a thousand miles of barren.

And then came again one of those brief intervals when the storm seemed to rest for a moment, and its moaning grew less and less, until it was like the sound of giant chariot wheels receding swiftly over the face of the earth.

Then came the silence--a few seconds of it--while in the north gathered swiftly the whispering rumble of a still greater force.
And in this silence came once more a cry--a cry which Jolly Roger McKay could no longer disbelieve, and close upon the cry the report of a rifle.