The Islanders

restored her to consciousness. More discoloration was developing: on her arms, her abdomen and her neck. Both eyes were bloodshot. She vomited repeatedly, bringing up blood. Antalya administered further antivenin serums. Hadima’s neck and throat had swollen to the point where she could not speak, and was barely able to breathe, with or without the oxygen mask.

Fifteen minutes into her ordeal, a deep calm suddenly came over Hadima and we feared the worst. I could see the way Antalya was reacting — it had become a matter of life support. Hadima’s pulse first accelerated, then calmed down again. She began to tremble, at first just her hands and feet, but then her whole body was shaken by tremors. The oxygen mask came off and Dake had to hold it over her mouth and nose by main force. We all felt we were losing her. But then she opened her eyes, and when Dake offered her some water she took it orally and kept it down. Gradually, the tremors left her. Her limbs were still discoloured and swollen. She shouted with pain if we touched her anywhere.

At the point where the sting or bite had been made a series of large blebs had appeared. These were hard to the touch but gave the patient no extra pain, so Antalya experimentally lanced one of them. A pale fluid filled with tiny black particles issued. Dake quickly examined these particles under a microscope, then on his urgent advice Antalya lanced the remainder of the blisters. The fluid that issued was carefully collected and stored in glass flasks.

Within another half an hour Hadima Thryme was able to breathe unaided. For three days, under constant monitoring and light sedation, she was allowed to sleep while being fed intravenously. The swelling gradually went down, although the acute pains continued.

Aubrac ordered an emergency vessel from Tumo, and Hadima was evacuated back to the university hospital. A few weeks later the team, who had remained on station, were relieved to hear that she had recovered from the poisoning and that all traces of the toxins were gone from her. She underwent a long convalescence, and afterwards said she did not wish to return to the expedition. She was replaced by Fran Herkker, a herpetologist from the main zoo in Muriseay Town, who arrived at the base a few weeks after the attack on Hadima.

After Hadima’s departure, Aubrac set aside his pleasurable pursuit of butterflies, beetles, wasps, and so on, and concentrated almost entirely on research into the insect that had stung her.

In the first place, knowing it was a new species, he named it after Hadima and gave it the scientific name Buthacus thrymeii. The genus was as yet tentative, because in general shape and ferocity the thryme was close to a scorpion, having two large and muscular pincers carried beside its head, and a curved tail rising over the body, tipped with a poisonous sting. But scorpions were of the arachnida class, having eight legs, while the thryme had only six. It was also significantly larger than any scorpion: most adult thrymes he eventually managed to capture were fifteen to twenty centimetres in length, but others he saw in the wild, which eluded him, appeared to be thirty or forty centimetres in length. From Jaem Aubrac’s journal:

We have at last managed to capture three thrymes, after several weeks of danger and frustration. It took trial and error, and a substantial degree of risk to myself and Dake. Naturally we were wearing protective gear, but the daytime temperatures on this island are suffocating. We have discovered that thrymes are most active when the rains come, which is every afternoon for about three hours. There is no lessening of temperature during the rains, so any physical movement across the muddy ground is exhausting.

The particular problems of trying to trap a thryme (setting aside the fact that the mature insect is one of the most venomous insects I have ever encountered) are firstly that they can run for short distances at an amazing speed, faster than a running man, even when the ground is muddy or waterlogged; secondly, they vanish into underground burrows with astonishing alacrity. Neither of us felt willing to start digging to try to find their nests.

In the end the only way we could get hold of them was to make a sudden or alarming noise or movement, which would make most of the insects in the vicinity roll themselves up. This at least made them stationary, although they would unroll very quickly indeed, their stings raised and their mandibles open for a strike. However, by moving swiftly we were able to scoop up and trap the ones we wanted.

We discovered just how dangerous the insect could be when rolled: the bristles are as fine as hairs, but they are stiff and hollow and act as hypodermic needles for the venom they contain. The bristles of one of the first thrymes I tried to pick up easily penetrated the outer level of the handling gauntlets I was wearing, although the inner layer managed to block them. One of the insects Dake picked up unrolled in his hand, and spat venom directly towards his eyes — needless to say he was wearing visor protection, which saved him.

Once the insects were safely contained in laboratory condition, Aubrac began to examine them at close quarters. Although none of the team had ever been attacked by one of the thrymes, they were clearly ferocious. Aubrac’s first enquiry was into the creatures’ aggressive nature, or whether its fearsome weapon system was merely for defence:

I have created three test environments, each made of an escape-proof glass container, with a layer of moist soil and leaf-mould at the base. Into this I have introduced a number of different kinds of potential foes or predators, to see how the thryme would get on. The grim results are as follows:

1.

A hawk-like predatory bird, seen by us to hover and dive against small animals or perhaps insects on the ground. The bird we captured for this test was approximately three times the size of the largest thryme. It panicked as it was thrust into the test cell, and was dead within four seconds. We have not repeated this experiment.

2.

A pit viper, at least three metres in length: survived for forty-eight seconds.

3.

A rat: killed within nineteen seconds. It survived so long only by fast attempts to escape.

4.

A giant venomous centipede, with a heavily armoured carapace and one of the most pernicious venoms Dake says he has ever analysed: it vigorously joined the thryme in battle, but survived for only thirty-three seconds.

5.

A large spider, seen to attack birds’ nests and to display ‘huntsman’ tendencies of aggressive behaviour, and equipped with two large sacs of highly effective venom: dead within four seconds.

6.

A huge scorpion, one of the largest I have ever come across: it attacked the thryme with instant relish, but was dead within eight seconds.

More alarming still was the discovery Dr Lei made about the system of venom carried by the thryme. It carried two arrangements of venom sacs: one in the tail, the other in tiny bladders inside its mandible. From the jaw it could envenom both by a bite and in some cases by spitting. This was a fairly conventional arrangement, although the venom was a peculiarly powerful cocktail of proteins, amino acids and anti-coagulants. Lei’s analysis of the compounds was to a large extent frustrated by the discovery that the venom appeared to change its nature from one individual thryme specimen to another, and even then to change its constituents at different times of the year.

The impact of a bite or sting on a human being, as they had seen when Hadima Thryme had been merely scratched with one of the defensive fine hairs, was a full-scale attack on not only the nervous system but also the blood and cells. Although standard antitoxins alleviated many of the symptoms if applied quickly enough, the venom was so intense that it was almost impossible, at least for a small team working on site, to know if an effective antidote would ever be possible.

However, an extra threat existed, as Aubrac described:

We have established that the really dangerous thryme is the female of the species. There is not much to distinguish male from female by outer appearance alone: the female seems to be slightly larger than the male, although as we have to work with so few specimens it’s difficult to be certain. She has extra joints in her arthropodic shell, and her thorax is wider than that of the male. However, if coming across one of these dark, fast-moving beings in the wild, you would not be able to tell the difference from the superficial appearance. The obvious rule remains: if you see a thryme, keep well away!

The female carries her young in a marsupial pouch inside her jaw — at this stage they are microscopic grubs, or in some cases fertilized eggs. A bite from her could be either a venomous bite, an impregnation of parasitic grubs, or a mixture of the two.

I am now urgently concerned to know whether or not it was a female who infected Hadima, because Dake