The desert lay under a leaden sky.

The yellow undulating sandy plain was like a frozen sea that had no end, and so far as eye could see was only bounded by the dark orb of heaven.

Here and there, grey, cleft, cone-shaped rocks and blunt-cornered stone boulders or blocks and flat-topped stones not unlike a table rose out of the sand-ocean.

Two such stones were situated close together; one was partly covered by the yellow quicksand, the other stood higher out of the ground.

On each of them lay a man stretched at full length.