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Headquarters of the French Foreign Legion, Algiers, Algeria.
Late in the afternoon on the third of October, 1923, the command-post received a emergency call on the wireless Marconi set.

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The distress call was from the village of Ghardaia, 600 kilometers to the south of us, deep in the Grand Erg Occidental region of the Sahara.  The wireless operator was frantic, screaming of spiders and begging for help before the signal was lost.

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Shaken, the radio operator alerted Captain Beauvais and I, and we set off in haste for Ghardaia, accompanied by a pair of armoured cars.

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We arrived at the village early the next day, and we were shocked to see that the village had been overrun by dozens of spiders - all nearly a foot across.

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The scene was terrible - everyone in the village had been killed and sucked bone-dry by the spiders. 

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After regaining our composure, we set about to exterminate the murderous arachnids.  While the spiders we encountered were quite large, we were still confused as to how they could be responsible for death of every inhabitant in the village, without so much as a single survivor...

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Confused, that is, until their mother returned.

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We stood stunned, face-to-face with the beast of Bedouin legend: Al 'Ankabut, the Great Spider.

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We had little time for admiration, as the beast unleashed its motherly wrath upon us.  Captain Beauvais narrowly escaped the ravenous monster's fangs by bounding up a fire-escape.

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Frustrated, the beast turned on me for its vengeance.  I fled to the mosque entrance, and emptied my carbine into her with little effect.  Private M'beke, the brave soul, rescued me from certain death by sinking two 20mm rounds in her from his car's turrets, mortally wounding her. 

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As we watched the beast twitch and heave in its dying moments, we pitied the fact that we were forced to kill such a magnificent creature - probably the last of its kind.  The Nubian vultures would leave little for us to study when we returned later to recover the remains.  We searched in vain any of its offspring, so it appeared that we had been thorough in our extermination.  But perhaps one eluded us, and is wandering and growing somewhere in the endless dunes around us?  I shudder at the thought...