How Reggie Saw the Sphinx by Nina Rhoades

How long and how far they ran the children never knew. They ran through the soft sand as if their feet were winged, with but one thought in both their minds, to get as far away from that dreadful village as possible, before the man with the stick turned from his victim, and started in pursuit of them. They were far too frightened by what they had seen to stop to consider that the man could not possibly bear them any ill will, or desire to injure them in any way. Both their hats were soon left behind; several times they fell, but fortunately the sand was soft, and they were up and off again in a moment. At last, hot, breathless, and utterly exhausted, Phyllis sank down in a little heap at the foot of a sand hill, and Reggie, scarcely less exhausted himself, dropped down beside her.

It was some minutes before either of them had recovered sufficient breath to move or speak, and then Reggie was the first to sit up and look around. There was not a human being in sight, and they seemed to be surrounded on every side, as far as the eye could reach, by nothing but vast stretches of desert sand. The last faint tints of daylight were just fading out of the evening sky, and a few stars were beginning to twinkle. Reggie shuddered. Something in the great stillness and solitude all around terrified him even more than the man beating the boy in the village had done.