uring termite. Only those ingenious
insects raise such monuments, which the greatest architects would not
disown."

"Whether they be termites or not, Mr. Benedict," replied Dick Sand,
"we must dislodge them and take their place."

"They will devour us. They will be defending their rights."

"Forward! Forward!"

"But, wait now!" said Cousin Benedict again. "I thought those
ant-hills only existed in Africa."

"Forward!" exclaimed Dick Sand, for the last time, with a sort of
violence. He was so much afraid that Mrs. Weldon might hear the last
word pronounced by the entomologist.

They followed Dick Sand with all haste. A furious wind had sprung up.
Large drops crackled on the ground. In a few moments the squalls of
wind would become unbearable. Soon one of those cones which stood on
the plain was reached. No matter how threatening the termites might
be, the human beings must not hesitate. If they could not drive the
insects away, they must share their abode.

At the bottom of this cone, made with a kind of reddish clay, there
was a very narrow hole. Hercules enlarged it with his cutlass in a few
moments, so as to give a passage even to a man like himself.

To Cousin Benedict's extreme surprise, not one of the thousands of
termites that ought to occupy the ant-hill showed itself. Was, then,
the cone abandoned?

The hole enlarged, Dick and his companions glided into it. Hercules
disappeared the last, just as the rain fell with such rage that it
seemed to extinguish the lightnings.

But those wind squalls were no longer to be feared. A happy chance had
furnished this little troop with a solid shelter, better than a tent,
better than a native's hut.

It was one of those termite cones that, according to Lieutenant
Cameron's comparison, are more astonishing than the pyramids of Egypt,
raised by the hands of men, because they have been built by such small
insects.

"It is," said he, "as if a nation had built Mount Everest, the highest
mountain of the Himalaya chain."

CHAPTER V.

ANTS AND THEIR DWELLING.

At this moment the storm burst with a violence unknown in temperate
latitudes.

It was providential that Dick Sand and his companions had found this
refuge!

In fact, the rain did not fall in distinct drops, but in streams of
various thickness. Sometimes it was a compact mass forming a sheet of
water, like a cataract, a Niagara. Imagine an aerial basin, containing
a whole sea, being upset. Under