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 TAgulhas, 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 



