FullReads

But Gerilleau learnt things about the ants, more things and more, at this stopping-place and that, and became interested in his mission.

“Dey are a new sort of ant,” he said. “We have got to be–what do you call it?–entomologie? Big. Five centimetres! Some bigger! It is ridiculous. We are like the monkeys—sent to pick insects… But dey are eating up the country.”

He burst out indignantly. “Suppose–suddenly, there are complications with Europe. Here am I–soon we shall be above the Rio Negro–and my gun, useless!”

He nursed his knee and mused.

“Dose people who were dere at de dancing place, dey ‘ave come down. Dey ‘ave lost all they got. De ants come to deir house one afternoon. Everyone run out. You know when de ants come one must–everyone runs out and they go over the house. If you stayed they’d eat you. See? Well, presently dey go back; dey say, ‘The ants ‘ave gone.’ … De ants ‘aven’t gone. Dey try to go in–de son, ‘e goes in. De ants fight.”

“Swarm over him?”

“Bite ‘im. Presently he comes out again–screaming and running. He runs past them to the river. See? He gets into de water and drowns de ants– yes.” Gerilleau paused, brought his liquid eyes close to Holroyd’s face, tapped Holroyd’s knee with his knuckle. “That night he dies, just as if he was stung by a snake.”

“Poisoned–by the ants?”

“Who knows?” Gerilleau shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps they bit him badly… When I joined dis service I joined to fight men. Dese things, dese ants, dey come and go. It is no business for men.”

After that he talked frequently of the ants to Holroyd, and whenever they chanced to drift against any speck of humanity in that waste of water and sunshine and distant trees, Holroyd’s improving knowledge of the language enabled him to recognise the ascendant word Saueba, more and more completely dominating the whole.

He perceived the ants were becoming interesting, and the nearer he drew to them the more interesting they became. Gerilleau abandoned his old themes almost suddenly, and the Portuguese lieutenant became a conversational figure; he knew something about the leaf-cutting ant, and expanded his knowledge. Gerilleau sometimes rendered what he had to tell to Holroyd. He told of the little workers that swarm and fight, and the big workers that command and rule, and how these latter always crawled to the neck and how their bites drew blood. He told how they cut leaves and made fungus beds, and how their nests in Caracas are sometimes a hundred yards across. Two days the three men spent disputing whether ants have eyes. The discussion grew dangerously heated on the second afternoon, and Holroyd saved the situation by going ashore in a boat to catch ants and see. He captured various specimens and returned, and some had eyes and some hadn’t. Also, they argued, do ants bite or sting?

“Dese ants,” said Gerilleau, after collecting information at a rancho, “have big eyes. They don’t run about blind–not as most ants do. No! Dey get in corners and watch what you do.”

“And they sting?” asked Holroyd.

“Yes. Dey sting. Dere is poison in the sting.” He meditated. “I do not see what men can do against ants. Dey come and go.”

“But these don’t go.”

“They will,” said Gerilleau.

Past Tamandu there is a long low coast of eighty miles without any population, and then one comes to the confluence of the main river and the Batemo arm like a great lake, and then the forest came nearer, came at last intimately near. The character of the channel changes, snags abound, and the Benjamin Constant moored by a cable that night, under the very shadow of dark trees. For the first time for many days came a spell of coolness, and Holroyd and Gerilleau sat late, smoking cigars and enjoying this delicious sensation. Gerilleau’s mind was full of ants and what they could do. He decided to sleep at last, and lay down on a mattress on deck, a man hopelessly perplexed, his last words, when he already seemed asleep, were to ask, with a flourish of despair, “What can one do with ants?… De whole thing is absurd.”