At length, even Cocoeni appeared satisfied that there were no more of the bashikonay hosts coming down this particular glen on that occasion. He therefore suggested that they might once more venture on terra firma, and place some decent space between themselves and the common enemy.
This prudent advice they hastily acted upon. Each man grasped his load firmly, and set off as fast as he could travel up the gorge, without standing upon the order of his going.
Traces of these awful ants were seen at every turn of the way. Beautifully polished and bran-new skeletons, large and small, were scattered about in every contorted attitude of the most excruciating agony.
Serpents with the tail-ends of their vertebrae in their jaws firmly clenched; centipedes, scorpions, and other creeping and venomous things exquisitely manipulated and polished of every fragment of corruptible matter lay about, perfectly cleaned, yet undisturbed, and not a joint out of place. Splendid museum specimens these were, going to waste.
Ned, even in his haste, could not help stooping and picking up a few of these as he ran along. He was astonished at the deadly dexterity and skill of those voracious workers. Not the most minute fragment of flesh, marrow, or sinew remained on any of those highly burnished bones. It was amazing and blood curdling. They had done all this without disturbing the order of their march. Each insect had snatched his bit in the passing, masticating it as he rushed onwards, while those following after had finished the gruesome task. It was numbers, with a fixed unity of purpose, which made the work compatible with speed. This was, as Ned said, the biggest co-operative concern that he had ever seen or read about.
“I hope these insect fiends are cannibalistic also in their habits, and that the whole tribe have gone on this locust expedition. It is something decidedly unpleasant to think that we may have to encounter them on our return.”
Nothing that they had experienced in the forest had been at all equal to the horror of those half-inch adversaries. As they passed those numerous and ghastly tokens of this most terrible foe, Ned and his chums mentally vowed that it would be better to push ahead, rather than retreat down that way too quickly again.
No animal that lived seemed too formidable to be able to resist them.
Before night came upon them and forced them to stop, they passed a group of skeletons terribly suggestive. They were those of a lion, a lioness, and two cubs. They had evidently been overtaken while sleeping in a little cavity, and devoured before they could move far away from each other. They lay in a circle, with the gravel torn up round them, in their impotent and maddening agony. The skeleton of the lion was on his back, completely curled up, with his thigh bone in his mouth. The lioness was sprawling with legs far apart, and the cubs in different positions, each indicative of torture.
That night they had to do without any fire, as there was no fuel to be found. Scarcely one of them slept, so unnerved had these sights made them. However, the darkness passed without any disturbance. Indeed, the silence of that long night was weird, for it seemed the silence of a universal death. Nothing broke it. No sigh of wind, no chirp of insect, not even the rustle of a night adder—only a deep and awful stillness that kept them awake with horrified expectancy.