The tall date-palms were stripped even of their bark; the soil was churned up; men and beasts if caught abroad were slain or shattered.
I stood at the gate and watched it.

There, not a yard away, fell the white hail, turning the world to wreck, while here within the gate there was not a single stone.

Merapi watched also, and presently came Ki as well, and with him Bakenkhonsu, who for once had never seen anything like this in all his long life.

But Ki watched Merapi more than he did the hail, for I saw him searching out her very soul with those merciless eyes of his.
"Lady," he said at length, "tell your servant, I beseech you, how you do this thing ?" and he pointed first to the trees and flowers within the gate and then to the wreck without.
At first I thought that she had not heard him because of the roar of the hail, for she stepped forward and opened the side wicket to admit a poor jackal that was scratching at the bars.

Still this was not so, for presently she turned and said: "Does the Kherheb, the greatest magician in Egypt, ask an unlearned woman to teach him of marvels?
Well, Ki, I cannot, because I neither do it nor know how it is done." Bakenkhonsu laughed, and Ki's painted smile grew as it were brighter than before.
"That is not what they say in the land of Goshen, Lady," he answered, "and not what the Hebrew women say here in Memphis.