IX
The khor was wide, covered on the bottom with stones among which grew dwarfish, thorny shrubs. A high rock full of crevices and fissures formed its southern wall. The Arabs discerned all this by the light of quiet but more and more frequent lightning flashes. Soon they also discovered in the rocky wall a kind of shallow cave or, rather, a broad niche, in which people could easily be harbored and, in case of a great downpour, could find shelter. The camels also could be comfortably lodged upon a slight elevation close by the niche. The Bedouins and two Sudânese removed from them their burdens and saddles, so that they might rest well, and Chamis, son of Chadigi, occupied himself in the meantime with pulling thorny shrubs for a fire. Big single drops fell continually but the downpour began only when the party lay down to sleep. At first it was like strings of water, afterwards ropes, and in the end it seemed as if whole rivers were flowing from invisible clouds. Such rains, which occur only once in several years, swell, even in winter time, the water of the canals and the Nile, and in Aden fill immense cisterns, without which the city could not exist at all. Stas never in his life had seen anything like it. At the bottom of the khor the stream began to rumble; the entrance to the niche was veiled as if by a curtain of water; around could be heard only splashing and spluttering.
