Out beyond our camp the desert was as dark and still as I have ever known it. There was no fitful air of summer, no heat eddy of the frightful day spinning about to rustle what was left of leaf and grass on the scorched earth. But there was this intense electric murmur of the stars at one's ears.

Then suddenly, ahead in a band of absolute black, I thought I heard the sound of a human voice. I stopped at once and listened carefully. The sound came again more distant, like the voice of a woman crooning over a cradle. I stood with my back to the horizon which was bright with flashes of lightning. Slowly, against the water light of the stars lapping briskly among the breakers of thorn and hardwood around us, emerged the outline of a woman. She was holding out a child in both her hands, high above her head, and singing something with her own face lifted to the sky. The hair at the back of my neck stood on end.

Q. Underline a sentence which illustrates the use of figurative language in fiction.