“What happiness it is to find you once more!” Pinocchio kept saying. “I had almost lost hope of ever being with you again.”
“But will you tell me what was the matter with you?”
“Oh, have I not told you? I have been killed!”
“But by whom, pray?”
“By fire ants! Will you see if you can take them off? Oh, they are beginning again. There must be a million of them!”
“I don’t see any on you!”
“Then you must be blind! Hundreds of ants or mosquitoes must be on me. They have heated their stingers red hot, and now they are enjoying themselves by sticking them into me on all sides. Oh! Oh!”
Globicephalous turned the boy around. “I see nothing!” he said finally.
“But I feel everything! I am being bitten, cut, torn to pieces.”