He held the sack directly over the bull’s head, and shook out the swarm. At the same time he ducked quickly, and snatched his coat up to cover his own face.
There was a hissing roar as though from a burst steam-pipe, and he felt a dozen burning stings on his hands. Then he heard a sudden, astonished snort from the bull and a sound of furious trampling.
He ventured to peep through an opening in his coat. The air round him was full of bees, and the bull’s face and head seemed covered with a surging brown mass. Thousands of bees were clinging and stinging pitilessly, while the animal rushed about, fiercely shaking its head and bellowing with pain and fury.
Blindly it started to bolt, and collided heavily with a tree. It made a fresh start and splashed into the brook. From the sounds it seemed to be rolling in the water. Probably it got rid of some of its tormentors in this way, but certainly not of all. It dashed out of the creek, bolted past Bob’s tree, knots of maddened bees still clinging to its hide, and crashed through the underbrush, straight away into the woods. There was no doubt that it was gone this time, for Bob could hear its smashing rush fully half a mile away.
Bob was stung a good deal himself, but this seemed a very light matter. He slipped to the ground and lost no time in finding a safer place, for the air was still full of savagely-excited bees. Here he remained for half an hour, picking the stings out of his skin, and waiting till he considered it safe to go home.
He might as well recover the sack, he thought, before he left, and he went to get it, regretting bitterly the loss of the swarm. No doubt it had saved his life; it could not be helped; but still it was a shame to lose Alice’s three-dollar bee.
But as he approached his former perch he was surprised to find that the bees had collected again. Not all of them, indeed; instead of the big swarm, there was now only about a quart of bees in a little bunch on a cedar twig. But they would hardly have gathered there if the queen had not been with them, and Bob bent over the cluster and looked at it closely.
They had got over their stinging fury now. He was able to scrutinize them carefully, and in a few seconds he made out the slender, graceful body of the yellow, Italian queen, as she crawled about among her bees. Full of delight, he slipped the sack over it, shook the bees off, and started hastily for home. More than half were lost, to be sure, but he would have sacrificed all the rest of the swarm to have saved the queen.
He reached the river without seeing anything more of the bull, ferried himself across, and went up to the apiary, where Carl and Alice were still working hard.
“I’ve got ’em!” he cried triumphantly as he appeared.