A large cloud
was coming up, a few heavy drops fell, and during the night the rain
pattered on the canvas; and he fell asleep, hoping that the morning
would be fine, though he had been told the rain would not cease for
days; and they were still several days' journey from Laghouat, where
they would get certain news of eagles and gazelles, for the Arab who
had first told Owen about the gazelle-hunters admitted (Owen cursed
him for not having admitted it before) that the gazelles did not
come down from the hills until after the rains and the new grass
began to spring up.
All the next day the rain continued. Owen watched it falling into the
yellow sand blown into endless hillocks; "Very drie, very drie," he
said, recalling a phrase of his own north country. Overhead a low
grey sky stooped, with hardly any movement in it, the grey moving
slowly as the caravan struggled on through grey and yellow colour--
the colour of emptiness, of the very void. It seemed to him that he
could not get any wetter; but there is no end to the amount of
moisture clothes can absorb, a bournous especially, and soon the rain
was pouring down Owen's neck; but he would not be better off if he
ordered the caravan to stop and his servants to pitch his tent under
a sand-dune.
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