Confessions of Aleister Crowley

408 In the morning, after a night spent in that condition when one is half asleep from exhaustion and half awake from misery, the storm still blew. We waited till nearly nine. The Bedouins told us that four miles on there was a village. We thought of coffee and made tracks. So off we went over the sopping desert and reached the "village" in an hour. There were palms and gardens --- and one deserted hovel, with no door. The roof, made of boughs weighted with big stones and made tight with mud, was half broken through. A giant stone hung imminent, half-way fallen. All day we waited for the rain to stop falling in the place "where it never fell". Night came and the blizzard redoubled its violence; but the shelter allowed us a little sleep until the mud dissolved and the roof became a sieve. The rest of the night was a shower-bath. In the morning there was no great sign of improvement. I had to kick the camel driver into action and chase the camels with my own fair feet. He had a million excuses for not going on, all on a level. "The camels would {650} catch cold" --- good from the man who had left them all night in the rain! "They would slip." "They would die." "They were too hungry." --- From the man who hadn't brought food for them! "They were tired" --- and so on. But I got the party off at last and came in a couple of hours to a tomb with a coffin in it. There they sat down and refused to stir. I simply took no notice. My disciple took one camel and I took the other, and went off. We left them in the tomb, grousing. Steering by map and compass, I judged a good pass through the next range of mountains, and made for it. The flat desert was standing in water; and the streams were difficult for the camels who hate water as much as disciples do. It was better on the mountainside. Near the top of the pass we perceived our men following, as the lesser of two evils. I was sorry, in a way; it would have been a fine adventure to worry through to Sidi Khaaled with these two brutes and a daft Davie! It was just as the top was reached that I said, without any apparent reason, "The storm's over." My disciple did his Thomas act. There was no opening in the furious grey heaven; the wind raged and the rain poured. But I stuck to it; I had felt the first contention of the south wind in a momentary lull. I was right. The descent of the pass was far from easy. The "road" crosses and recrosses the bed of the river as often as it can; sometimes even follows the course. And this stream was a furious spate, slippery and dangerous for men, impassable for members of the Alpine Club, and almost impassable for camels. It was nearly night fall before we left the gorge and a barren plain confronted us. It was useless to struggle on much further. The rain still poured; the desert stood six inches deep in water. The hills were a mass of snow. (We heard later that many houses had been washed away at Ouled Djellal in this unprecedented storm. Traffic was interrupted by snow on the East Algerian Railway, and the Maréchal Bugeaud was forty hours late at Marseilles, having to beat up under the lee of the Spanish shore for shelter.) So I picked out a good big tree by the stream and we pitched camp. We had little hope of lighting a fire; but there is in the desert a certain impermeable grass, and by using this as a starter, we got it going. No sooner had the blaze sprung up, filling the night with