54 LODGES IN THE WILDERNESS 



Mute, ominous and black loomed the dune- 

 devil. Who and what was he, that unspeak- 

 able entity? Was he not Typhon, Lord of 

 Evil and Autocrat of Desert Places — that 

 monstrous deity who was cast forth from the 

 councils of the Egyptian gods on account of 

 his unspeakable iniquities? Yes, — it was 

 Typhon and none other; he wandered south 

 in search of a kingdom to usurp, and found it 

 there. But the rain-god, whose throne is the 

 distant Drakensberg, stretched forth his silver 

 sword, the Gariep, and ham-strung the in- 

 truder. Otherwise the Kalihari might now be 

 stretching forth a hand to grasp l'Agulhas, and 

 all the African southland be a waste. 



That embodied malignity, crouched and 

 huddled beneath the sumptuous stars — what 

 unspeakable outrage was his bestial and 

 inchoate rudiment of a mind devising? Per- 

 haps that day he had sent a message bidding 

 his hag-handmaid, the north wind, come and 

 help him to destroy us, intruders. There was 

 menace in the air. The temperature had hardly 

 fallen, — as it almost invariably did at night. 



At daybreak the atmosphere was tense, op- 

 pressive and phenomenally lucid. Often the 

 desert dawn is followed by a faint semi- 

 opacity; an opaline suggestion of vapourised 



