This place, with its leaf-thatch-covered houses and sheds, its creeper-invaded sugar-mill, its little jetty of timber and canes, was very still in the morning heat, and showed never a sign of living men. Whatever ants there were at that distance were too small to see.
“All the people have gone,” said Gerilleau, “but we will do one thing anyhow. We will ’oot and vissel.”
So Holroyd hooted and whistled.
Then the captain fell into a doubting fit of the worst kind. “Dere is one thing we can do,” he said presently, “What’s that?” said Holroyd.
“ ’Oot and vissel again.”
So they did.
The captain walked his deck and gesticulated to himself. He seemed to have many things on his mind. Fragments of speeches came from his lips. He appeared to be addressing some imaginary public tribunal either in Spanish or Portuguese. Holroyd’s improving ear detected something about ammunition. He came out of these preoccupations suddenly into English. “My dear ’Olroyd!” he cried, and broke off with “But what can one do?”
They took the boat and the field-glasses, and went close in to examine the place. They made out a number of big ants, whose still postures had a certain effect of watching them, dotted about the edge of the rude embarkation jetty. Gerilleau tried ineffectual pistol shots at these. Holroyd thinks he distinguished curious earthworks running between the nearer houses, that may have been the work of the insect conquerors of those human habitations. The explorers pulled past the jetty, and became aware of a human skeleton wearing a loin cloth, and very bright and clean and shining, lying beyond. They came to a pause regarding this …
“I ’ave all dose lives to consider,” said Gerilleau suddenly.
Holroyd turned and stared at the captain, realising slowly that he referred to the unappetising mixture of races that constituted his crew.
“To send a landing party—it is impossible—impossible. They will be poisoned, they will swell, they will swell up and abuse me and die. It is totally impossible … If we land, I must land alone, alone, in thick boots and with my life in my hand. Perhaps I should live. Or again—I might not land. I do not know. I do not know.”
Holroyd thought he did, but he said nothing.
“De whole thing,” said Gerilleau suddenly, “ ’as been got up to make me ridiculous. De whole thing!”
They paddled about and regarded the clean white skeleton from various points of view, and then they returned to the gunboat. Then Gerilleau’s indecisions became terrible. Steam was got up, and in the afternoon the monitor went on up the river with an air of going to ask somebody something, and by sunset came back again and anchored. A thunderstorm gathered and broke furiously, and then the night became beautifully cool and quiet and everyone slept on deck. Except Gerilleau, who tossed about and muttered. In the dawn he awakened Holroyd.
“Lord!” said Holroyd, “what now?”
“I have decided,” said the captain.
“What—to land?” said Holroyd, sitting up brightly.
“No!” said the captain, and was for a time very reserved. “I have decided,” he repeated, and Holroyd manifested symptoms of impatience.
“Well—yes,” said the captain, “I shall fire de big gun!”
And he did! Heaven knows what the ants thought of it, but he did. He fired it twice with great sternness and ceremony. All the crew had wadding in their ears, and there was an effect of going into action about the whole affair, and first they hit and wrecked the old sugar-mill, and then they smashed the abandoned store behind the jetty. And then Gerilleau experienced the inevitable reaction.
“It is no good,” he said to Holroyd; “no good at all. No sort of bally good. We must go back—for instructions. Dere will be de devil of a row about dis ammunition—oh! de devil of a row! You don’t know, ’Olroyd—”
He stood regarding the world in infinite perplexity for a space.
“But what else was there to do?” he cried.
In the afternoon the monitor started down stream again, and in the evening a landing party took the body of the lieutenant and buried it on the bank upon which the new ants have so far not appeared …
IV
I heard this story in a fragmentary state from Holroyd not three weeks ago.
These new ants have got into his brain, and he has come back to England with the idea, as he says, of “exciting people” about them “before it is too late.” He says they threaten British Guiana, which cannot be much over a trifle of a thousand miles from their present sphere of activity, and that the Colonial Office ought to get to work upon them at once. He declaims with great passion: “These are intelligent ants. Just think what that means!”
There can be no doubt they are a serious pest, and that the Brazilian Government is well advised in offering a prize of five hundred pounds for some effectual method of extirpation. It is certain too that since they first appeared in the hills beyond Badama, about three years ago, they have achieved extraordinary conquests. The whole of the south bank of the Batemo River, for nearly sixty miles, they have in their effectual occupation; they have driven men out completely, occupied plantations and settlements, and boarded and captured at least one ship. It is even said they have in some inexplicable way bridged the very considerable Capuarana arm and pushed many miles towards the Amazon itself. There can be little doubt that they are far more reasonable and with a far better social organisation than any previously known ant species; instead of being in dispersed societies they are organised into what is in effect a single nation; but their peculiar and immediate formidableness lies not so much in this as in the intelligent use they make of poison against their larger enemies. It would seem this poison of theirs is closely akin to snake poison, and it is highly probable they actually manufacture it, and
