Another journey into the realm of the strange and terrifying.

I hope you will enjoy the trip that it will thrill you a little and chill you a little.

So settle back.

Get a good grip on your nerves.

Where are we going?

You'll find out when we get there.

Out of the past, phantoms of a world gone by, speak again their immortal tale.

A passion in the desert.

Have you ever noticed how very much a woman is like a beast?

The resemblance, no doubt, is due to the fact that they have so very much in common.

Any man of us frequently has seen a woman turn into a beast, or a good fact similar thereof, at any provocation.

But there is only one man of my experience who saw a beast turn into a woman.

He was a Frenchman by the name of Gaston Monet.

It all started in Upper Egypt.

A column of soldiers with the French Foreign Legion

was on the march to join their eastern flank.

After three months of marching and fighting guerrilla fashion,

this particular group came to a small Arab village named Delaheber.

Strangely enough, in that isolated, dirty village, there was one white woman.

You had no idea what a white woman looks like to a soldier who's been on the march for months.

And this one, well, she was no ordinary woman, she was lithe and supple, like a desert panther.

Her skin was tanned by the sun, and her hair, it was

...