'They come like shadows, so depart.'
—reappearing and disappearing by some mysterious law, but seldom culminating in rain.
Yes, there are clouds. Look this time far away towards the horizon line across the bay, and watch that rolling sea which looks like foam, that rises higher and higher as we watch it, darkening the sky, and soon enveloping us in a kin of sea fog, through which the sun gleams dimly red, whilst the white walls of the tombs appear cold and grey against a leaden sky. See it all pass away again across the plain of the Mitidja, and disappear in the shadows of the lesser Atlas. There is a hush in the breeze and all is bright again, but a storm is coming.
[Original]
Take shelter, if you have courage, inside one of the Marabouts' tombs (there is plenty of space), whilst a tempest rages that should wake the dead before Mahomet's coming. Sit and wait in there, perhaps an hour, whilst one or two strong gusts of wind pass over, and then all is still again; and so dark that we can see nothing inside but the light of a pipe in one corner. We get impatient, thinking that it is passing off.
But it comes at last. It breaks over the tombs, and tears through the plantation, with a tremendous surging sound, putting to flight the Arabs on guard, who wrap their bournouses about them and hurry off to the village, with the cry of 'Allah il Allah;' leaving the care of the tombs to the palms, that have stood guard over them so long. Oh, how they fight and struggle in the wind! how they creak, and moan, and strike against one another, like human creatures in the thick of battle! How they rally side by side, and wrestle with the wind—crashing down suddenly against the walls of the tomb, and scattering their leaves over us; then rallying again, and fighting the storm with human energy and persistence!
It is a fearful sight—the rain falling in masses, but nearly horizontally, and with such density that we can see but a few yards from our place of shelter—and it is a fearful sound, to hear the palm-trees shriek in the wind.
There was one part of the scene we could not describe, one which no other than Dante's pen, or Doré's pencil, could give any idea of; we could not depict the confused muttering sound and grinding clatter (if we may call it so), that the battered and wounded aloes made amongst themselves, like maimed and dying combatants trodden under foot. Many scenes in nature have been compared to a battle-field; we have seen sheaves of corn blown about by the wind, looking like the tents of a routed host; but this scene was beyond parallel—the hideous contortion, the melancholy aspect of destruction, the disfigured limbs in hopeless wreck, the weird and ghastly forms that writhed and groaned aloud, as the storm made havoc with them.