The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Raid on the Termites, by Paul Ernst

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Title: The Raid on the Termites

Author: Paul Ernst

Release Date: November 12, 2008 [EBook #27248]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: Denny bounded free and again sent the length of his spear
into the body.]

The Raid on the Termites

_A Complete Novelette_

By Paul Ernst

Armed with splinters of steel, two
ant-sized men dare the formidable
mysteries of a termitary.

CHAPTER I

_The Challenge of the Mound_

It was a curious, somehow weird-looking thing, that mound. About a yard
in height and three and a half in diameter, it squatted in the grassy
grove next the clump of trees like an enormous, inverted soup plate.
Here and there tufts of grass waved on it, of a richer, deeper color,
testifying to the unwholesome fertility of the crumbling outer stuff
that had flaked from the solid mound walls.

Like an excrescence on the flank of Mother Earth herself, the mound
loomed; like an unhealthy, cancerous growth. And inside the enigmatic
thing was another world. A dark world, mysterious, horrible, peopled by
blind and terrible demons--a world like a Dante's dream of a second
Inferno.

Such, at least, were the thoughts of Dennis Braymer as he worked with
delicate care at the task of sawing into the hard cement of a portion of
the wall near the rounded top.

His eyes, dark brown and rimmed with thick black lashes, flashed
earnestly behind his glasses as they concentrated on his difficult job.
His face, lean and tanned, was a mask of seriousness. To him, obviously,
this was a task of vital importance; a task worthy of all a man's
ability of brain and logic.

Obviously also, his companion thought of the work as just something with
which to fill an idle afternoon. He puffed at a pipe, and regarded the
entomologist with a smile.

To Jim Holden, Denny was simply fussing fruitlessly and absurdly with an
ordinary "ant-hill," as he persiste