Sam remembered hearing about this experiment at Headquarters, but he was very foggy regarding it, so he continued looking wise. Bert pondered.
"I wonder what the exact circumference of this hind wheel is. Got a tape measure anywhere, Esther?"
Mrs. Trailey said her tape measure was half-way down one of the packing-cases, back at the camp. Esther said she was so sorry not to have one, but would a hairpin be of any use. Trailey sighed and sat down on a knoll to rest. Bert stood beside the wagon. He knew he was approximately six feet tall, so he said to Sam, pulling off his cap: "How far from the top of my head is the top of the wheel?"
"Abaht a couple of foot," replied Sam, looking up and down between the crown of Bert's blonde head, and the wheel's rim.
"Must be a four-foot wheel, then," said Bert. "Standard size, probably. Good." After a little mental arithmetic, which resolved into nothing but a fuzz in his head, he worked out an abstruse problem on the back of an envelope. "That's four yards round the wheel. Four into thirty-five hundred and twenty, goes—what? Eight hundred and eighty. That's it, Sam."
"Wot are yer reck'nin'?"
"Nothing," muttered Bert, checking his figures carefully.
"Thought so. 'Ello! Wot's the matter wiv the ole man!" Everybody turned to look at William Trailey, who was enormously agitated about something.
"Martha! Martha! Come and help me," he moaned. "Oh, be quick! Millions of insects are crawling up my legs. I'm alive with them."
Trailey had merely fallen asleep on an ant-hill. Swarms of big black ants with wicked-looking red heads crept all over him. Nothing like this had ever come their way before. The little brutes were evidently debauched. Trailey grasped bunches of his trousers, and his waistcoat, in his agony, only to release them for fresh grips elsewhere.