His face still veiled by a fold of his mantle, the Prophet, obeyed and followed blindly by his soldiers, among whom deception and suffering had not caused the slightest murmur, soon reached the entrance to the narrow, weird pass of the "Mabraku'n-Naqa."
Skirted on each side by crags from one hundred and fifty to two hundred cubits high, the dark defile produced the most sinister impression. The Faithful felt their breasts shrinking as if crushed between the dizzy dominating walls. What they most feared was to hear the resounding echoes of the miraculous, disembowelled she-camel. In that case, no power on earth could have mastered the mad terror that must have overwhelmed the animals ridden by the soldiers. By dint of wild leaps and bounds, the camels would have thrown off their loads of arms and food, and ridding themselves of their drivers, taken to flight; when, after throwing down and trampling all those who might have tried to stop them, the men must have been abandoned on foot in the midst of the most frightful of all deserts.
The slightest noises, amplified by the sonorous echoes of the rocky heights, made the Believers start and shudder. They went on in the most profound silence, thinking only of how best to speed their camels. At last the lugubrious passage was traversed; the soldiers' breath came and went normally in their breasts now relieved of all oppression, and a wide, open space, suitable for pitching the tents, offered itself to their gaze.
When the Believers had finished the work of encampment, the Prophet warned them that a heavy tempest would rage during the night, and he enjoined them solemnly: 'Let those in charge of camels tie them securely and no man leave his tent without a companion.'
They had scarcely time to give a look at the hobbles of their beasts than the Prophet's prediction began to come true. The sun had set, covered by a misty veil, contrasting with its habitual sumptuous purple; its rayless pallor was the sign of an extraordinary storm.
All of a sudden, a brownish curtain sprung up from the horizon, to drag in its moving folds the orb of day, and the shades of coming night took on a tarry tint. The darkness thickened to such an extent that each man might have thought he was struck blind. A strange rumbling sound arose from the depth of the desert and approached with incredible rapidity, soon changing its deafening uproar which might have been taken for the hissing of monstrous vipers, accompanied by diabolical vociferation. At the same moment, the camp was crushed by a gigantic whirling spout of sand, tearing away in its gyrations everything that was not securely fastened. The pitchy darkness gave way to yellow obscurity, still more impenetrable to the eye.