Dick Sands, the Boy Captain

by Jules Verne

"Good!" he whispered to himself.

He was exulting at the discovery that what he had been waiting for so patiently was a rare specimen of the tribe of the Cicindelidæ, peculiar to the districts of Southern Africa.

"A tuberous manticora!" he exclaimed.

The insect began to move again, and as it crawled down to the entrance of the nostrils the tickling sensation became too much for endurance, and Benedict sneezed. He made a sudden clutch, but of course he only caught his own nose. His vexation was very great, but he did not lose his composure; he knew that the manticora rarely flies very high, and that more frequently than not it simply crawls. Accordingly he groped about a long time on his hands and knees, and at last he found it basking in a ray of sunshine within a foot of him. His resolution was soon taken. He would not run the risk of crushing it by trying to catch it, but would make his observations on it as it crawled; and so with his nose close to the ground, like a dog upon the scent, he followed it on all fours, admiring it and examining it as it moved. Regardless of the heat he not only left the doorway of his hut, but continued creeping along till he reached the enclosing palisade.

At the foot of the fence the manticora, according to the habits of its kind, began to seek a subterranean retreat, and coming to the opening of a mole-track entered it at once. Benedict quite thought he had now lost sight of his prize altogether, but his surprise was very great when he found that the aperture was at least two feet wide, and that it led into a gallery which would admit his whole body. His momentary feeling of astonishment, however, gave way to his eagerness to follow up the hexapod, and he continued burrowing like a ferret.

Without knowing it, he actually passed under the palisading, and was now beyond it;-the mole-track, in fact, was a communication that had been made between the interior and exterior of the enclosure. Benedict had obtained his freedom, but so far from caring in the least for his liberty he continued totally absorbed in the pursuit upon which he had started. He watched with unflagging vigilance, and it was only when the hexapod expanded its wings as if for flight that he prepared to imprison it in the hollow of his hand.

All at once, however, he was taken by surprise; a whizz and a whirr and the prize was gone!

Disappointed rather than despairing, Benedict raised himself up, and looked about him. Before long the old black speck was again flitting just above his head. There was every reason to hope that it would ultimately settle once more upon the ground, but on this side of the palisade there was a large forest a little way to the north, and if the manticora were to get into its mass of foliage all hope of keeping it in view would be lost, and there would be an end of the proud expectation of storing it in the tin box, to be preserved among the rest of the entomological wonders.

After a while the insect descended to the earth; it did not rest at all, nor crawl as it had done previously, but made its advance by a series of rapid hops. This made the chase for the near-sighted naturalist a matter of great difficulty; he put his face as close to the ground as possible, and kept starting off and stopping and starting off again with his arms extended like a swimming frog, continually making frantic clutches to find as continually that his grasp had been eluded.

After running till he was out of breath, and scratching his hands against the brushwood and the foliage till they bled, he had the mortification of feeling the insect dash past his ear with what might be a defiant buzz, and finding that it was out of sight for ever.