Figurative Language - Simile and Metaphors (Fear)

Theme: Fear

            We had two days without water in the hilly, sand-covered August furnace of the Gobi Desert and I felt the first flutterings of fear. The early days of the sun rising over the rim of the world dispersed the sharp chill of the desert night. Fear came with small, fast-beating wings and was suppressed as we sucked pebbles and dragged our feet on to make maximum distance before the blinding heat of noon. From time to time one or other of us would climb one of the endless knolls and look south to see the same deadly landscape stretching to the horizon.

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            The heat enveloped us, sucking most of the moisture from our bodies, putting ankle-irons of lethargy about our legs. Each one of us walked with his own thoughts and none spoke, dully concentrating on placing one foot ahead of the other interminably. Most often I led the way, and the others bunched together a few yards behind. I was driving them now, making them get to their feet in the mornings, forcing them to cut short the noon rest. As we still walked in the rays of the settling sun the fear hit me again. It was, of course , the fundamental, most oppressive fear of all – that we should die here in the burning wilderness.

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            It began to take shape and definition, and hope began  to well up in us. Subsequently, hope became certainty. There were trees – real, live, growing, healthy trees in a clump, outlined against the sand like a blob of ink on a fresh-laundered tablecloth.

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            The trees loomed larger and I saw they were palms and in their shade was a sunken hollow, roughly oval-shaped, and I knew there must be water. A few hundred yards from the oasis we crossed an east-west caravan track. On the fringe of the trees we passed an incongruous pile of what looked like rusting biscuit tins as in some fantastic mid-desert junk yard. In the last twenty yards we quickened our pace and I think we managed a lope that was very near a run.