a spring is always welcome, even when it
carries a taste of magnesia; and there was one in the water they had
discovered, not sufficient to discourage the camels, who drank
freely enough, but enough to cause Owen to make a wry face after
drinking. All the same, it was better than the water they carried in
the skins. The silence was extraordinary, and, hearing the teeth of
the camels shearing the low bushes of their leaves, Owen looked
round, surprised by the strange resonance of the air and the
peculiar tone of blue in the sky, trivial signs in themselves, but
recognisable after the long drought. He remembered how he had
experienced for the last few days a presentiment that rain was not
far off, a presentiment which he could not attribute to his
imagination, and which was now about to be verified. 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. Besides, it would be dangerous to do this, for the wind
was rising, and their hope was to reach a caravansary before
nightfall.

"And it is not yet mid-day," Owen said to himself, thinking of the
endless hours that lay before him, and of his wonderful horse, so
courageous and so patient in adversity, never complaining, though he
sank at every step to over his fetlocks in the sand. Owe