“It is their instinct, you know; it is their instinct.”
On the 17th of June an adventure happened to him which was attended with unexpected consequences. It was about eleven o’clock in the morning. The insufferable heat had driven all the residents within the depot indoors, and not a native was to be seen in the streets of Kazonndé. Mrs. Weldon was dozing; Jack was fast asleep. Benedict himself, sorely against his will, for he heard the hum of many an insect in the sunshine, had been driven to the seclusion of his cabin, and was falling into an involuntary siesta.
Suddenly a buzz was heard, an insect’s wing vibrating some fifteen thousand beats a second!
“A hexapod!” cried Benedict, sitting up.
Shortsighted though he was, his hearing was acute, and his perception made him thoroughly convinced that he was in proximity to some giant specimen of its kind. Without moving from his seat he did his utmost to ascertain what it was; he was determined not to flinch from the sharpest of stings if only he could get the chance of capturing it. Presently he made out a large black speck flitting about in the few rays of daylight that were allowed to penetrate the hut. With bated breath he waited in eager expectation. The insect, after long hovering above him, finally settled on his head. A smile of satisfaction played about his lips as he felt it crawling lightly through his hair. Equally fearful of missing or injuring it, he restrained his first impulse to grasp it in his hand.
“I will wait a minute,” he thought; “perhaps it may creep down my nose; by squinting a little perhaps I shall be able to see it.”
For some moments hope alternated with fear. There sat Benedict with what he persuaded himself was some new African hexapod perched upon his head, and agitated by doubts as to the direction in which it would move. Instead of travelling in the way he reckoned along his nose, might it not crawl behind his ears or down his neck, or, worse than all, resume its flight in the air?
Fortune seemed inclined to favour him. After threading the entanglement of the naturalist’s hair the insect was felt to be descending his forehead. With a fortitude not unworthy of the Spartan who suffered his breast to be gnawed by a fox, nor of the Roman hero who plunged his hand into the red-hot coals, Benedict endured the tickling of the six small feet, and made not a motion that might frighten the creature into taking wing. After making repeated circuits of his forehead, it passed just between his eyebrows; there was a moment of deep suspense lest it should once more go upwards; but it soon began to move again; neither to the right nor to the left did it turn, but kept straight on over the furrows made by the constant rubbing of the spectacles, right along the arch of the cartilage till it reached the extreme tip of the nose. Like a couple of movable lenses, Benedict’s two eyes steadily turned themselves inwards till they were directed to the proper point.
“Good!” he whispered to himself.
He was exulting at the discovery that what he had been waiting for so patiently was a rare specimen of the tribe of the Cicindelidae, peculiar to the districts of Southern Africa.
“A tuberous manticora!” he exclaimed.
The insect began to move again, and as it crawled down to the entrance of the nostrils the tickling sensation became too much for endurance, and Benedict sneezed. He made a sudden clutch, but of course he only caught his own nose. His vexation was very great, but he did not lose his composure; he knew that the manticora rarely flies very high, and that more frequently than not it simply crawls. Accordingly he groped about a long time on his hands and knees, and at last he found it basking in a ray of sunshine within a foot of him. His resolution was soon taken. He would not run the risk of crushing it by trying to catch it, but would make his observations on it as it crawled; and so with his nose close to the ground, like a dog upon the scent, he followed it on all fours, admiring it and examining it as it moved. Regardless of the heat he not only left the doorway of his hut, but continued creeping along till he reached the enclosing palisade.
At the foot of the fence the manticora, according to the habits of its kind, began to seek a subterranean retreat, and coming to the opening of a mole-track entered it at once. Benedict quite thought he had now lost sight of his prize altogether, but his surprise was very great when he found that the aperture was at least two feet wide, and that it led into a gallery which would admit his whole body. His momentary feeling of astonishment, however, gave way to his eagerness to follow up the hexapod, and he continued burrowing like a ferret.
Without knowing it, he actually passed under the palisading, and was now beyond it;—the mole-track, in fact, was a communication that had been made between the interior and exterior of the enclosure. Benedict had obtained his freedom, but so far from caring in the least for his liberty he continued totally absorbed in the pursuit upon which he had started. He watched with unflagging vigilance, and it was only when the hexapod expanded its wings as if for flight that he prepared to imprison it in the hollow of his hand.
All at once, however, he was taken by surprise; a whizz and a whirr and the prize
