THE DUNE MONSTER 37 



Like a crouching spider or a half-huddled 

 cuttle-fish the monstrosity sprawled, its 

 talon-tentacles seeming to gather in the plains 

 to infest them like a malignant cancer. 



The character of the country we were 

 traversing had changed; again the ground 

 was hard beneath our feet; angular fragments 

 of limestone were strewn over its surface. It 

 was as though the dune-devil had collected and 

 assimilated the surface sand so that its loathly 

 limbs might develop. Inexpressibly sinister 

 was this creature, this mysterious, insatiable 

 intruder from the desolate northern wastes. It 

 seemed to be endowed with some low-graded 

 form of rudimentary life ; otherwise it was hard 

 to account for the definite and arbitrary varia- 

 tions in the scheme of its southward advance. 

 For the tentacles did not all extend in the same 

 direction ; occasionally one curved in its course 

 and developed against the prevailing wind. 

 The dune-monster was the slow-pacing steed 

 of the Thirst King ; it was his throne, his host 

 and his strong city; it was the abhorrent body 

 of which he was the resistless and implacable 

 soul ! 



Our camping-place lay within the curve of 

 one of the tentacles; it was expedient from 

 the stand-point of the hunter to have the 



