Commenced a stampede from the garden. Shrill with fear, rose a woman's scream from the heart of the throng: "A scorpion! a scorpion!" Panic threatened, but fortunately the doors were wide, so that, without disaster the whole fantastic company passed into the hotel; and even the military band retired. Cairn perceived that he alone remained in the garden, and glancing along the path in the direction of the fountain, he saw a blotchy drab creature, fully four inches in length, running zigzag towards him. It was a huge scorpion; but, even as he leapt forward to crush it, it turned and crept in amid the tangle of flowers beside the path, where it was lost from view. The scorching wind grew momentarily fiercer, and Cairn, entering behind a few straggling revellers, found something ominous and dreadful in its sudden fury. At the threshold, he turned and looked back upon the gaily lighted garden. The paper lamps were thrashing in the wind, many extinguished; others were in flames; a number of electric globes fell from their fastenings amid the palm tops, and burst bomb-like upon the ground. The pleasure garden was now a battlefield, beset with dangers, and he fully appreciated the anxiety of the company to get within doors. Where chrysanthemum and _yashmak_ turban and _tarboosh_, uraeus and Indian plume had mingled gaily, no soul remained; but yet--he was in error ... someone did remain. As if embodying the fear that in a few short minutes had emptied the garden, out beneath the waving lanterns, the flying _debris_, the whirling dust, pacing sombrely from shadow to light, and to shadow again, advancing towards the hotel steps, came the figure of one sandalled, and wearing the short white tunic of Ancient Egypt. His arms were bare, and he carried a long staff; but rising hideously upon his shoulders was a crocodile-mask, which seemed to grin--the mask of Set, Set the Destroyer, God of the underworld. Cairn, alone of all the crowd, saw the strange figure, for the reason that Cairn alone faced towards the garden. The gruesome mask seemed to fascinate him; he could not take his gaze from that weird advancing god; he felt impelled hypnotically to stare at the gleaming eyes set in the saurian head. The mask was at the foot of the steps, and still Cairn stood rigid. When, as the sandalled foot was set upon the first step, a breeze, dust-laden, and hot as from a furnace door, blew fully into the hotel, blinding him. A chorus arose from the crowd at his back; and many voices cried out for doors to be shut. Someone tapped him on the shoulder, and spun him about. "By God!"--it was Sime who now had him by the arm--"_Khamsin_ has come with a vengeance! They tell me that they have never had anything like it!"