The third species, I remember well, is called ibolai. It is an insect twice as large as our common house-fly. The wings cross each other. This fly is black, more elongated than the nchouna, and quicker on the wing; its sting is long, and strong enough to pierce the thickest clothes one can wear in the heat of an African summer. The sting is so terribly sharp that I have often jumped up with the sudden pain, which was as if a pin had been stuck savagely into my person; but the bite of this insect, if painful, does not last like that of the nchouna. You need not think for a moment that the day is over with the flies, and that one is going to rest. Toward four o’clock, when the sun begins to go down and lays hidden back of the hills, the iboco, nchouna, and ibolai disappear. The igooguai, as I have said before, makes again its appearance to plague and annoy; toward sunset they retire for parts unknown to me, and several varieties of musquitoes make their appearance to remind man that he is made of flesh and blood. In some parts of the country they are very plentiful, and absolutely terrible, but I am happy to say that on the banks of the Ovenga, where the flies I have described to you are very abundant, the musquitoes are not so very numerous. The rainy season is the time when all those flies are most abundant; the dry season is almost free from them, and in many places they then become almost unknown.
Such is, I assure you, a faithful picture of the flies of that region. The best way to get rid of them is to keep in motion. If you stand still they are sure to come upon you.
You will ask yourselves, How can people live in such a country? It is wonderful how one gets accustomed to snakes, ants, flies, musquitoes, scorpions, and centipedes. To be sure, they are not pleasant companions.
CHAPTER XXIV.
ELEPHANT PITS.—A CAPTIVE.—DIVIDING THE MEAT.—THE ALETHE CASTANEA.
Querlaouen, Malaouen, and their wives and children, and all their families, which amounted to about forty people, had worked hard at digging elephant pits, of the same shape as those I have described to you in “Stories of the Gorilla Country,” and which I saw in the cannibal country. The pits had been covered with branches of trees, while others were not for elephants to fall into. Often when they roam at night, before they know it, down they are. A great work it must have been to dig them; they were about fifteen feet deep, perfectly perpendicular, and about eight or ten feet in length and six feet broad.
Hanous had also been fixed, such as I have described to you while among the cannibals, in a preceding volume. These were about ten or fifteen feet long; and at a distance of about a foot apart there were huge sharp-pointed iron spikes about six or eight inches in length. Each of these hanous must have weighed several hundred pounds; and as they fell from a great height, the weight falling on an elephant’s spine must be very great, and more than sufficient to break it.
So, passing through these tangled forests, we had to be very careful, in order not to fall into pits or to have a hanous fall upon our heads; for in that case you would never have heard from me again. Malaouen knew exactly where these pits were.
We were going through the forest with the greatest care, thinking that we might meet gorillas, among which might be one of those lone fierce males.
Suddenly we heard a noise in the distance. We listened. What could it be? Malaouen’s quick ear soon detected that an elephant had been caught either by a hanou, or that he had fallen into the pit. We listened, to make sure of the direction the noise came from. We looked most carefully at our guns, to make sure that we could fully depend upon them, and then set out for the place where we suspected the huge beast was lying prostrate.