Next day, hunger took a new form, faintness.  He could not walk for it; his jackal’s skin oppressed him; he lay down exhausted.  A horror seized his dejected soul.  The diamond!  It would be his death.  No man must so long for any earthly thing as he had for this glittering traitor.  “Oh! my good horse! my trusty rifle!” he cried.  “For what have I thrown you away?  For starvation.  Misers have been found stretched over their gold; and some day my skeleton will be found, and nothing to tell the base death I died of and deserved; nothing but the cursed diamond.  Ay, fiend, glare in my eyes, do!” He felt delirium creeping over him; and at that a new terror froze him.  His reason, that he had lost once, was he to lose it again?  He prayed; he wept; he dozed, and forgot all.  When he woke again, a cool air was fanning his cheeks; it revived him a little; it became almost a breeze.

And this breeze, as it happened, carried on its wings the curse of Africa.  There loomed in the north-west a cloud of singular density, that seemed to expand in size as it drew nearer, yet to be still more solid, and darken the air.  It seemed a dust-storm.  Staines took out his handkerchief, prepared to wrap his face in it, not to be stifled.

But soon there was a whirring and a whizzing, and hundreds of locusts flew over his head; they were followed by thousands, the swiftest of the mighty host.  They thickened and thickened, till the air looked solid, and even that glaring sun was blackened by the rushing mass.  Birds of all sorts whirled above, and swooped among them.  They peppered Staines all over like shot.  They stuck in his beard, and all over him; they clogged the bushes, carpeted the ground, while the darkened air sang as with the whirl of machinery.  Every bird in the air, and beast of the field, granivorous or carnivorous, was gorged with them; and to these animals was added man, for Staines, being famished, and remembering the vrow Bulteel, lighted a fire, and roasted a handful or two on a flat stone; they were delicious.  The fire once lighted, they cooked themselves, for they kept flying into it.  Three hours, without interruption, did they darken nature, and, before the column ceased, all the beasts of the field came after, gorging them so recklessly, that Staines could have shot an antelope dead with his pistol within a yard of him.

But to tell the horrible truth, the cooked locusts were so nice that he preferred to gorge on them along with the other animals.

He roasted another lot, for future use, and marched on with a good heart.

But now he got on some rough, scrubby ground, and damaged his shoes, and tore his trousers.

This lasted a terrible distance; but at the end of it came the usual arid ground; and at last he came upon the track of wheels and hoofs.  He struck it at an acute angle, and that showed him he had made a good line.  He limped along it a little way, slowly, being footsore.