ABSTRACT
ON Sunday 6th we rose early after a very disturbed night. A sufficient number of mosquitos remained in the hut to annoy and keep us awake a long time. Then just as we had fallen to sleep “ Charlie,” my dog, made such a disturbance as to wake us all up. He scampered over us and rolled himself among our rugs as if he had gone mad. But we remembered that he had been afflicted in this way before. The black ants had got into his coat. He could very well endure mosquitos, but ants were too much for him. I took him in hand, and was trying to rid him of his foes when my companion began to cry out: the ants were upon him. No time was to be lost, the enemy had entered our castle, and had to be expelled. We turned up our rugs, and there were the foe in countless myriads. In a few minutes the whole camp was astir. The swarming legions had attacked every hut. The fires were blown up, and firebrands blazed in all directions. Tofiki came to our aid. It was sad work, but we were compelled to do it. The firebrand was thrust among the crowding hosts, and fearful was the slaughter done. We could distinctly hear the bodies of our assailants hissing, and crackling beneath the scorching blaze. They could not stand before this, and we were not surprised to see them beat a retreat. But on the field what a sight remained ! Myriads of black and shrivelled forms bespoke the terrible havoc that had been made among them, and I am not certain that our consciences did not smite us. Yet we only acted in self-defence, and this reconciles us to our woeful deeds. Tofiki was about to prepare us a little food, before we started, but he found the meat we had put by from yesterday’s stores covered with ants, a living, creeping, compact, mass—like a swarm of bees. It was no doubt our meat that had attracted them to our quarters.
