It was a miniature fight of giants and pigmies, the latter fighting as bravely as the giants.
The time at last came when all the pigmy kind were overpowered and killed, one by one, and the battlefield was strewn with their dead, mingled here and there with those of the larger ants. When the battle was ended, and the young and the eggs had been carried inside of what remained of the building, the work of repairing all the rents that had been made by the destructive work of the njokoos began.
The officers made tracings with the points of their nippers at the apertures to show where the closing was to take place. Then the workers came and first carried away the débris that was in their way. Then they closed the walls in the manner in which they had at first built the structure, by putting loads upon loads of clay-like matter upon one another. Others came carrying minute pebbles or coarse grains of earth in their mouths, and during the night they finished rebuilding the structure just as it was before.
CHAPTER XII
THE GIANT NCHELLELAYS
The giant nchellelays are so named as they are much larger than all the other species of nchellelays, or white ants. Their bodies are of a whitish yellow color, with very hard black heads, armed with most formidable pincers,—terrible weapons for fighting and biting. Their officers or overseers are smaller than the workers, but have more elongated bodies. As they are larger than all the other nchellelays, so their structures are much larger also. They vary from five to fifteen feet in height. Millions upon millions of grains of earth are required in their construction. Their mode of building these is wonderful and unlike that of other termites. How they live under the ground before their structure is built, no one can tell.
One day the giant nchellelays said: “Let us build a new structure for us to live in and be secured against our enemies, the air, the rain, and the sun.”
“Yes,” replied all the others forming the great colony, adding:
“We shall have to work hard and use a great deal of thought, perseverance, and skill before our work is accomplished, for untold numbers of grains of yellow earth will have to be taken from under the black loam and carried above the ground where we are to build, put side by side, and cemented together before our home is finished.”
Soon after this talk they began their labors. They brought, from the numerous tunnels they made, grains of yellow earth, and laid their foundation, each nchellelay carrying only one grain at a time.
The workers labored with great earnestness; thousands upon thousands carried between their pincers grains of earth, and laid them down side by side, each passing over the grain he had brought and depositing on it a gluey substance which might be called mortar or cement, and which joined the grains of sand together.