"I'm alive! I'm alive!" he groaned in horror. "What's the best thing to do, Martha? They're all inside my vest, under my arms, and crawling up—ugh-h-h-h—my back," he shuddered.
"Oh, what can I do?" cried Mrs. Trailey, as she tore his coat off, and then his waistcoat, and inserted her hand down inside the back of his shirt, in a noble—though exceedingly timorous—attempt to clutch the voracious ants out in handfuls. Meanwhile her husband was becoming frantic, chiefly as a result of the frightful, crawling sensation. The little beasts had dispatched scouts to explore this monumental acquisition of food. These it was which had about reached the victim's collar-bone, and were making preparations for entering his whiskers.
Esther brought her singular presence of mind to the rescue as usual. Approaching quite near to her tortured sire, she made several suggestions, some sensible, but most of them idiotic; then she saw an ant on her ankle. Abandoning her father to his fate, she dithered four times, screeched, pointed to her foot, called on Bert to save her, saw that her lover was extremely well-placed for her reception, then calmly closing her eyes fell back into his willing arms.
In spite of every effort to defeat the ants, Mrs. Trailey was beaten. She acknowledged it.
"I can't do any more for you, William," she sobbed—"unless we make a fire and throw you on it. But it's judgment on you, you may depend. It's an omen. You'll be this way all your life—on and off; you see if you're not. It's a plague on you for your wickedness," and Mrs. Trailey picked two ants from her tortured husband's neck courageously, threw them on the ground savagely, and then stamped on them. "There, you horrible little brutes," she uttered from behind clenched teeth, "that finishes you."
But Trailey's lucky star had only hidden itself behind a fleeting cloud. Sam jumped down from the wagon, and took charge of the situation.
"Watch the 'orsis," he commanded Bert, "an' you, ma'am, get aht of the way, please," then, grasping the distracted Trailey's arm, and assisting him to his feet, he said sympathetically: "Come on, guv'ner; come wiv me," and off they made for a hidden slough, of which there were plenty about, where he stripped his whimpering charge naked, swilled him down with double-handfuls of cold water; and, while the tormented man gasped and choked and coughed, he shook, squeezed, and finally drowned the ants out of his clothes.
When the excitement had subsided, Bert reluctantly let go of Esther's waist and went on with his mathematical calculations. He tied his handkerchief tightly round a spoke of one of the rear wheels of the wagon, near the rim, and then turned to Esther again.
"Will you ride in the wagon, Esther, and count the number of revolutions the wheel makes? When it has gone round eight hundred and eighty times, tell Sam to stop. Make a mark on the wagon for each hundred, so you won't lose count"—handing Esther a pencil—"then if we've travelled due north we shall be quite close to our land. It should be fairly easy. The country is open beyond those trees."
Esther smiled understanding, and held out her arms for her instructor to assist her into the wagon. She was only a very moderate tennis player, and swimmer; and had never walked above twenty-five miles in one day in her life, so, naturally, she found climbing into a wagon rather difficult.