eel that this is not a thing to be made a joke
of."

"You're right, Ernest," said Frank; "we ought not to take it in that
way. Indeed, I am sure I am thankful enough for the mercy shown us, and
should be sorry if you thought otherwise. And so does Nick, too, I'll
answer for it."

"Of course I'm thankful," said Gilbert. "And I dare say I am too apt to
turn things into jest. Well, we'll drop the matter now, at all events.
And by the same token, here comes the doctor. Now, I suppose, we shall
hear whether this place will do for our halt for the night or not.
Well, doctor, is the rascal really gone?"

"Yes, I am satisfied he is. I doubted, at first, whether Omatoko really
believed in the beetle. He has lived so long among the Dutch, that I
thought he might have learned better. But he hasn't, I am persuaded.
Yes, he has really gone back. He daren't follow us."

"That is well, at all events. Well, what do you think of this as a
halting-place? It's an abandoned kraal, I suppose, only it must have
belonged to some tribe of savages, who took more pains with their
house-building than those Namaquas."

"Kraal, Nick? Do you suppose these houses, for such they may certainly
be called; do you suppose these houses to be the handiwork of men?"

"To be sure I do," returned Nick; "who but men could have built them?"

"They are nests of white ants," said Lavie, "and if we were to stay here
all night, our clothes, our knapsacks, our belts, and everything that
could be devoured by them, would be gnawed to pieces!"

"Ants, doctor! You are joking, surely. What--that hut there, or
whatever it is, is a good twenty feet high, and thirty, I'll go bail for
it, in diameter? Ants make that! It isn't possible."

"It's true, anyhow," said Lavie. "I know they have been found more than
a hundred feet in circumference. It is the enormous number of the ants
that enables them to construct such huge dwellings. And, after all,
their work is nothing compared with that of the coral insect of the
Pacific."

"Don't they sometimes build in the trunks of trees?" asked Warley.

"Very frequently," answered the surgeon. "Their mode of going to work,
when they do, is very much like their house-building. In the latter
case, they heap together an immense mass of earth, which they form into
innumerable galleries, all leading, inwards, to the central chamber of
the structure. When they choose a tree, and they generally pitch upon
one of