did make a concerted rush. Suddenly the lieutenant was shouting and cursing and beating at his legs. "I'm stung!" he shouted, with a face of hate and accusation towards Gerilleau.
Then he vanished over the side, dropped into his boat, and plunged at .once into the water. Holroyd heard the splash.
The three men in the boat pulled him out and brought him aboard, and that night he died.
III
The Sinister Canoe
Holroyd and the captain came out of the cabin in which the swollen and contorted body of the lieutenant lay and stood together at the stern of the monitor, staring at the sinister vessel they trailed behind them. It was a close, dark night that had only phantom flickerings of sheet lightning to illuminate it. The cuberta, a vague black triangle, rocked about in the steamer's wake, her sails bobbing and flapping, and the black smoke from the funnels, spark-lit ever and again, streamed over her swaying masts.
Gerilleau's mind was inclined to run on the unkind things the lieutenant had said in the heat of his last fever.
"He says I murdered 'im," he protested. "It is simply absurd. Some one 'ad to go aboard. Are we to run away from these confounded ants whenever they show up?"
Holroyd said nothing. He was thinking of a disciplined rush of little black shapes across bare sunlit planking.
"It was his place to go," harped Gerilleau. "He died in the execution of his duty. What has he to complain of? Murdered! . . . But the poor fellow was—what is it?—demented. He was not in his right mind. The poison swelled him. . . . U'm."
They came to a long silence.
"We will sink that canoe—burn it."
"And then?"
The inquiry irritated Gerilleau. His shoulders went up, his hands flew out at right angles from his body. "What is one to do?" he said, his voice going up to an angry squeak.
"Anyhow,” he broke out vindictively, "every ant in dat cuberta!—I will burn dem alive!"
Holroyd was not moved to conversation. A distant ululation of howling monkeys filled the sultry night with foreboding sounds, and as the gunboat drew near the black mysterious banks this was reinforced by a depressing clamour of frogs.
Burning the Canoe
"What is one to do?" the captain repeated after a vast interval, and suddenly becoming active and savage and blasphemous, decided to burn the Santa Rosa without further delay. Every one aboard was pleased by that idea, every one helped with zest; they pulled in the cable, cut it, and dropped the boat and fired her with tow and kerosene, and soon the cuberta was crackling and flaring merrily amidst the immensities of the tropical night. Holroyd watched the mounting yellow flare against the blackness, and the livid flashes of sheet lightning that came and went above the forest summits, throwing them into momentary silhouette, and his stoker stood behind him watching also.
The stoker was stirred to the depths of his linguistics. "Saüba, go pop, pop," he said, "Wahaw!" and laughed richly.
But Holroyd was thinking that these little creatures on the decked canoe had also eyes and brains.
The whole thing impressed him as incredibly foolish and wrong, but—what was one to do? This question came back enormously reinforced on the morrow, when at last the gunboat reached Badama.
The Deserted Village
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, in thick boot 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!"
