led himself, turned about,
walked deliberately forward to the hold, clambered up to the fore decking,
from which the sweeps are worked, stooped for a time over the second man,
groaned audibly, and made his way back and aft to the cabin, moving very
rigidly. He turned and began a conversation with his captain, cold and
respectful in tone on either side, contrasting vividly with the wrath and
insult of a few moments before. Holroyd gathered only fragments of its
purport.

He reverted to the field-glass, and was surprised to find the ants had
vanished from all the exposed surfaces of the deck. He turned towards the
shadows beneath the decking, and it seemed to him they were full of
watching eyes.

The cuberta, it was agreed; was derelict, but too full of ants to put men
aboard to sit and sleep: it must be towed. The lieutenant went forward to
take in and adjust the cable, and the men in the boat stood up to be ready
to help him. Holroyd's glasses searched the canoe.

He became more and more impressed by the fact that a great if minute and
furtive activity was going on. He perceived that a number of gigantic
ants--they seemed nearly a couple of inches in length--carrying
oddly-shaped burthens for which he could imagine no use--were moving in
rushes from one point of obscurity to another. They did not move in columns
across the exposed places, but in open, spaced-out lines, oddly suggestive
of the rushes of modern infantry advancing under fire. A number were
taking cover under the dead man's clothes, and a perfect swarm was
gathering along the side over which da Cunha must presently go.

He did not see them actually rush for the lieutenant as he returned, but
he has no doubt they 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.

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