and as a protection against darts or poison it would serve
admirably. It was strong but bendable, and tough enough
to resist the scythe-like jaw of any Formican. Could I
not fold it up and take it with me ?
With a flush of excitement mounting in my cheeks I
laid hold of the sheet and half pulled, half dragged it out
level on the ground away from the rock. In the center,
I saw, it was badly ridged in large vertical lines and
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circles, and rain and dust had settled here, showing that
it had been in this same position for a long time. But it
was no moment to speculate on how or when, or who.
its mysterious owner might be; it was here before me,
and that was enough.
With an even greater excitement I strode boldly across
the shining sheet itself and looked down to see how badly damaged the vertical ridges were and if too crushed for my purposes. All of it seemed to be extremely uneven, almost as if it had been made like some old farm rag rug. I should have to press it out with a heavy rock,
I saw, perhaps with Atta’s help.
Not all the ridges were from folding, however, I saw
presently. Some of them, to my amazement, seemed to
form a definite kind of large hieroglyphic, done in characters so large that they were difficult to decipher, but remarkably like Roman letters, raised in low relief from
the background of silver. I could not make out for a
while the one nearest to me. Then of a sudden it stood
out plainly. It was a large letter C.
Without waiting I took another step and deciphered
the second letter just beyond it. It was clearly an H and
easily seen. With rapid, fascinated steps I followed the
other ridges or letters, and as I did so I added in my
mind each one to the preceding. They were nine in all,
and for a moment I stood like a contestant in a childish
game, repeating them: C—H —O—C—O—L —A—T—E.
I gripped the handle of my ax in a kind of pounding
amazed disbelief as I uttered aloud the word they
formed.
“Chocolate! Chocolate!”
Why, the hieroglyphic was no hieroglyphic at all! It
was the simple word “chocolate,” done on a grand scale
on something like coarse silver foil.
With the discovery I drew the back of my hand across
my suddenly wet forehead and closed my eyes to ease
the strain of the suddenly aching eyeballs. Chocolate on
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silver foil; just the huge word chocolate written in letters
four feet high on shining tinfoil!
For an instant I wondered if I were about to go completely mad. Then I opened my eyes, strode violently to the edge of the shining sheet, and kicked up the edge so
that the underneath side was visible. Yes, it was bright
gold, just like the piece of tinfoil that a giant might unwrap from a choice piece of chocolate and toss away into the grass of a garden.
“Chocolate”—on tinfoil! Written on a gargantuan candy
wrapper precisely like the one I myself had tossed away
so carelessly into the grass of my own sunken garden
so long ago and far away!
At the incredible suggestion I burst into a mad, wild
shout of ironical laughter and thrust from my consciousness the whole insane conception. Why, if this were actually tinfoil from candy, what was I? A madman in a hideous dream? A patient in some hospital for
the mentally deranged, imagining an impossible nightmare, an illusion painted by a sick brain on the hospital wall? If this were tinfoil of natural size, I myself could
certainly be nothing more than a pygmy, fighting for my
life in the grass. I was not a man, lost in some foreign
land. Like Atta I was a mere insect, carrying a lance that
could be a broken needle, finding rope that was mere
thread, taking refuge in what could only be a thimble-
living in a tiny English walnut shell and stumbling about
in the coarse fieldgrass of my own farm; a pygmy struggling against other pygmies. Atta was not my real friend, my companion, my rescuer—he was a mere ant. And I
myself— A bitter joke, the size of my own fingernail!
At the frightful picture I clenched my teeth and with
a final effort at self-preservation shut the whole dreadful
nightmare from my staring eyes. Instead, with sweating
hands, I dragged and trampled clumsily the great sheet
of tinfoil into one mighty bundle. I tied it up into transportable shape; I staggered with it to Trotta and laid it across her in front of my saddle. And then with a
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hoarse cry to her I swung myself into the saddle and
kicked her brutally in the ribs.
How I ever covered the dozen miles to our stronghold
I do not know. It still seems to me a miracle that Trotta
should have made her way through the trackless jungle,
burdened down with both my heavy bundle and myself
and without any directions from me. For I sat almost
senseless on her back.
It is with shame that I confess what happened next.
For I was not senseless when I arrived at our stronghold.
I was fully aware of our huge poplar-like thistle fence, of
the familiar ridges in our walnut house, of the small
Fabrans gazing in the paddock. I had had time, too, to
remember the uncanny familiarity of the great valley,
with its distant uplands and the monstrous cup-like trees
on the heights beyond. I had even struggled to shut from
my memory the picture of the South African veldt with
its bending dandelion trees. But it had all been in vain.
At each added fact and proof faintness had assailed me,
and sweat stood out on my hands, and I was close to being a madman when Trotta stopped before our paddock gate and I stared dully at its bars.
Then Atta came out of the house to unbar the gate.
His pale, gentle eyes stared at me appraisingly when I
did not move. He approached and laid a feeler on me.
And at the touch and the unmistakable final evidence
something went berserk within me. Like a maniac I turned
on him, and I know now that nothing can excuse the madness, the fury, the bestial insanity with which I fell upon him and with vile curses sought to tear him limb from
limb, blaspheming the Providence that had brought me
to such a pass, grinding my teeth in a kind of murderous
frenzy that wished nothing so much as death—release
from this monstrous position in which I lived and struggled on an equality with the very insects of the fields.
It was as if the mere touch of Atta had confirmed the
reality of the nightmare from which I strove to awake;
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as if in a frenzy of despair and horror I sought to end
my life and his.
I cannot give sufficient thanks to whatever God of
mercy there may be who gave Atta to understand in that
supreme moment that I, the maniac who struggled so
violently to take his life, was not his sane friend and
companion of a few hours before, but a wretched sick
man possessed by some devil of destruction. How long it
took him to subdue me enough to bind me securely in
the upper chamber, I do not know. I can but dimly remember how, in the con
fused blur of that awful struggle, he forced me down, down upon the hard ground outside
the paddock until my strength suddenly gave way and
I fell and lost consciousness completely.
When I awoke in the darkness of the upper chamber,
it was to the confused sounds of a new struggle going on
outside; and undoubtedly it was this that saved my reason. At first I confused this struggle with the one through which I had just come. But in a moment it resolved itself
into what it was: the clash of armor against armor, the
hoarse shouts of hostile Formicans outside in the garden,
and the peculiar battle cry that only Atta could raise
when he defended himself from enemies.
The mere sound was enough to drive from me all
consideration of my terrible new position and the hopelessness of my ever regaining all that had been taken from me. Nothing mattered in that clash of sounds except to join the conflict going on so fiercely just below our stronghold door. For evidently the enemy had come
upon us before Atta had had opportunity to close the
door, and he was now sore beset out in the open.
“Hold ’em, Atta!” I shouted almost instinctively. “I’m
coming!”
Alas, I could only sink back with a groan on realizing
that the dimness prevented me from seeing. With a desperate effort I strove at my bonds, only to fall back again in despair.
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“Curse my insanity,” I muttered to myself. ‘I've destroyed us!”
For a moment I was indeed convinced that I had
ended our lives for good and the conviction must have
given me superhuman strength. For I made one more
mighty effort, broke some of the black strands that held
me, and in a heartbreaking second was free to rise and
stagger to the doorway, below which Atta stood beating
back with deadly precision a host of Formicans in brilliant ruddy armor; a host that far outnumbered and outclassed any I had ever seen for the fierceness of their cut-and-thrust and general attack. With a shout of encouragement I snatched up an ax that lay in the corner and leaned out the doorway.
I was just in time. A big ruddy Formican was pressing
along the side of the house, seeking to take Atta in the
rear as he stood below our doorway, and I could just
reach him. Holding fast to the side of the doorway, I
swung my ax as far back as I could and let it descend
with a crash upon his skull.
“The door!” I shouted to Atta above the din. “We must
close the door against them!”
Beyond a nod my comrade gave no sign that he had
heard me or that he realized that I was recovered from
my fit of madness and able to stand shoulder to shoulder
with him again. It was no time for proffering excuses for
past actions. I took a quick look at the outside country
through the open doorway, and my heart sank. As far as
I could see in the twilight marched a host of mangificent
warriors such as were pressing us hard around our narrow doorway. Atta himself was visibly fighting the fight of despair, and it was clearly but a question of time before it would all be over.
“Ill spell you!” I shouted to him. “The minute I jump
down, grab the door-handles and swing the door!”
Without a second’s hesitation I leaped from the lintel
straight upon Atta’s nearest adversary, driving my dagger
deep into his neck, while Atta turned and pulled himself
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up to the doorway, leaning far out to grasp the doorhandles and pull down the swinging doors. For a moment I thought he had succeeded and we were saved. But, by
what accident of fate I know not, the door stuck fast, and
in that second two other Formicans appeared, one on
each side of the house. The first, on my right, I killed with
one blow of my ax; but behind me the other must have
grasped Atta by the leg, for even as I turned back to
face a new knot of soldiers who were crowding upon me
I was aware of a struggle behind me. And then Atta came
crashing down from the lintel, a red-armored soldier beneath him, and two more Formicans leaped upon him.
With a cry of rage I whirled my ax and leaped for the
spot myself. I had little hope, of course, of snatching victory out of disaster. But not for nothing had my loyal companion saved my reason and my life. Insect or
Martian, I would show him that men have a spark of
loyalty and nobility left in them, despite the exhibition
I had given an hour since. “I’ll get them!” I shouted to
his pinned-down form.
But ,even as I shouted I knew that we were at the
end of our resources. Both of us were trapped outside in
the open, and nothing could save us now from that host
of trained warriors. All that we could hope for was to
die fighting and achieve death with honor.
For a giddy moment I did stagger his assailants. I
killed one while he threw off a second. But a mass of warriors was crowding in upon us now, and before I could despatch the third a smashing blow from behind knocked
me in a dizzy heap, and the fight closed over me, and
I knew no more.
Chapter 7
I t w a s some time before I came fully to myself. I had
been conscious of being lifted from the ground and of
being carried swiftly along for an indefinite period. But
the blow on my head had deprived me of all acuteness
of perception or feeling, and for many minutes I found
I was going through the Egyptian war.
Presently, however, the continuous joggling motion
with which my captors carried me broke through to my
consciousness, and I opened my eyes to find that I was
being carried along a narrow path by a large black Form-
ican, one of a long column that must have numbered
many hundreds. I could see them winding in and out
through the trees far ahead of me.
What astonished me beyond measure was to observe
that every sixth or seventh black warrior in this host balanced on his head, like an Asiatic water-carrier, one of the red warriors who had attacked our house, and that
these latter, though much in the minority, seemed to be
directing the line of march and issuing orders that were
immediately obeyed by their black servants.
My speculations as to the meaning of this oddity were
soon cut short by a glimpse of Atta himself, who was
being borne along in the same manner as I, though some
distance behind me. This sight affected me powerfully
and went far to clear my brain of any last trace of my re-
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cent revulsion. I could not contemplate his distant inert
form without an extraordinary feeling of remose; and the
proof thus afforded that our friendship was real had a peculiarly strong overtone that reassured me instantly on the dubious questions of my own sanity, I immediately
addressed my captor in a low tone. And at the next halt I
succeeded, without attracting the attention of any of the
master warriors, in persua
ding him to fall back until I
was within speaking distance of my friend.
As soon as Atta saw me he grinned slightly and listened
as before to my voice with gravity, without a hint that
anything untoward had ever interrupted our relationship.
But he warned me very quickly that in no circumstances
should we continue talking together, and that for the
present all thought of escape was out of the question.
Our very lives depended on absolute obedience to the
wills of those who were now our masters.
They were, he told me, a very fierce and savage tribe,
whom he had heard of in his childhood as living somewhere far to the south of his home. They were dreaded for the swiftness and implacability with which they carried out their forays, descending unexpectedly upon some peaceful and distant village, slaying all who resisted, and
carrying off the young to be reared as slaves. My yellow
hair and beard, he thought, odd as it may seem, had been
the means of saving my life; for this particular tribe, he
told me, even more than other Formicans, had a special
fondness for that color and even kept certain small animals as pets because they had tufts of coarse yellow hair on their heads. This I found to be true, and I afterwards
saw many of these animals being fondled and petted by
the ferocious warriors. The black Formicans were all
slaves, Atta said, and we were evidently being carried
off to be slaves, too. Meanwhile caution, the utmost
caution, was our only defense.
“But surely,” I protested in a whisper, “you don’t mean
that because we have been taken prisoner we must give
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up all hope of escape? Surely you can’t be content to be
a slave now?”
There was no other way, he replied ruefully. Soon the
Great Cold—it was thus that he always spoke of winter—
would be upon us, and, once that had arrived, no one
could travel. In the meantime we should have to make
the best of our situation, perhaps until spring.
This extraordinary resignation in one who had always
shown exceptional daring in the most trying circumstances astonished me. Guilty as I was of our mishap, I found such an attitude very hard to accept, and I argued