“Pshaw!” said Benedict contemptuously; “do you imagine they would be afraid of you? they would reduce your carcase to a skeleton in no time, if they found it across their path.”
“No doubt, if I were dead,” replied Hercules, “they could pick my bones pretty clean; but while I had the use of my limbs I think I could crush them by thousands.”
“Thousands!” ejaculated Benedict, with increasing warmth; “you think you could demolish thousands; but what if they were hundreds of thousands, millions, hundreds of millions? Alive as much as dead, I tell you, they wouldn’t be long in consuming every morsel of you.”
During this brisk little discussion Dick Sands had been pondering over what Benedict had said. There was no doubt that the amateur naturalist was well acquainted with the habits of white ants, and if, as he affirmed, the insects had instinctively quitted their abode on account of some approaching danger, Dick asked himself whether it was safe or prudent for his party to remain. But the fury of the storm was still so great that all possibility of removing from the shelter seemed precluded for the present, and, without inquiring farther into the mystery, he merely said—
“Although the ants, Mr. Benedict, have left us their provisions, we must not forget that we have brought our own. We will have our supper now, and tomorrow, when the storm is over, we will see what is to be done.”
Fatigue had not taken away the appetite of the energetic travellers, and they gladly set about the preparation of their meal. The provisions, of which they had enough for another two days, had not been injured by the rain. For some minutes the crunching of hard biscuit was the only sound to be heard; Hercules, in particular, seemed to pound away with his huge jaws as with a pair of millstones.
Mrs. Weldon was the only one of the party who ate little; and that little was only taken at Dick’s earnest solicitation; he could not help noticing, with much concern, that although Jack seemed to be satisfactorily recovering, and, without sign of fever, was sleeping calmly enough on a bed made up of clothes spread out in one of the cells, yet his mother had lost much of her courage, and seemed preoccupied and depressed.
Cousin Benedict did due honour to the simple evening repast; not on account of its quantity or quality, but because it gave him an opportunity of holding forth upon the subject of termites. He was much vexed that he had been unable to discover a single specimen in the deserted anthill with which he might illustrate his lecture, but notwithstanding this deficiency he continued to talk, heedless whether anyone was listening.
“They are wonderful insects,” he said; “they belong to the order of the Neuroptera, which have the antennae longer than the head; their mandibles are well-developed, and the inferior pair of wings is generally as large as the superior. There are five families of them; the Panorpidae, the Myrmeleontidae, the Hemerobiidae, the Termitidae, and the Perlidae. I need hardly say that what we are now occupying is a dwelling of the Termitidae.”
At this point Dick became all attention; he was anxious to ascertain whether this discovery of white ants had aroused any suspicion in Benedict’s mind that they must be on African soil. The naturalist, now fairly mounted on a favourite hobby, went on with his discourse.
“I am sorry not to have a specimen to show you, but these Termitidae have four joints in the tarsi, and strong horny mandibles. The family includes, as genera, the Mantispa, the Raphidia, and the Termes, the last commonly known as white ants, amongst which are Termes fatalis, Termes lucifugus, Termes mordax, and several others more or less rare.”
“And which of them built this anthill?” inquired Dick.
“The bellicosi!” replied Benedict, pronouncing the name with as much pride as if he were eulogizing the Macedonians or some warlike nation of antiquity. “Bellicosi,” he continued, “are to be found of every size. There is as much difference between the largest and the smallest of them as there is between Hercules and a dwarf; the workers are about one-fifth of an inch long; the soldiers, or fighting-ants, are half an inch; whilst the males and females measure four fifths of an inch. There is another curious species, called sirafoos, which are about half an inch long, and have pincers instead of mandibles, and heads larger than their bodies, like sharks. In fact, if sharks and sirafoos were placed in competition, I should be inclined to back the sharks.”
“And where are these sirafoos most generally to be found?” said Dick cautiously.
“In Africa, in the southern and central provinces. Africa may truly be termed the land of ants. Livingstone, in the notes brought home by Stanley, describes a battle which he was fortunate enough to witness between an army of black ants and an army of red. The black ants, or drivers, which are what the natives call sirafoos, got the best of it; and the red ants, or tchoongoos, after a very resolute defence, were obliged to retire defeated, carrying their eggs and young ones with them. Livingstone avows that he never saw the warlike instinct so strongly developed as in these sirafoos; the stoutest man, the largest animal, a lion or an elephant, quails before the grip of their mandibles: no obstacle impedes their progress; no tree is too lofty for them to scale, and they contrive to cross wide streams by forming their own bodies into a kind of suspension bridge. Equally amazing are their numbers; Du Chaillu, another African traveller, relates how it took more than twelve hours for a column of ants to file past him, without a moment’s pause in their march. These numbers, however, cease to be so surprising when it is explained that their fecundity is such that a single female
