Mute, ominous and black loomed the dune-devil. Who and what was he, that unspeakable 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 intruder. 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? Perhaps 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, oppressive and phenomenally lucid. Often the desert dawn is followed by a faint semi-opacity; an opaline suggestion of vapourised moisture,--the diaphanous veil of evaporated dew. But on the previous night no dew had fallen. Heaven had withheld that gracious, healing touch with which it sometimes assuaged the scorch inflicted by the ruthless sun on the patient wilderness. The plains lay hushed as though in anticipation of sinister happenings. Soon the east grew suddenly splendid; shafts of faint gold and delicate rose spread from the horizon half-way to the zenith. These were the wheel-spokes of the still-hidden chariot of the sun-god. The flanks of Typhon, the huddled shoulders between which his head was sunk, took on the hue of glowing bronze. The Belted Mountain shone like a bale-fire. The sun arose; his first beams smote like the lash of a whip. In the twinkling of an eye the glamour of morning had shrunk and shrivelled,-- fallen to the dust and left no more trace than would a broken bubble. The world was now a tortured plain on which the redoubled wrath of the sky was poured forth. Typhon seemed to stir in his sleep,--to expand and palpitate. The reason of his baleful and unbridled power was at hand. That day he would be omnipotent and unquestioned Lord of the Desert.