[V]
ANT-BEAR AND ANT-MAN
It is characteristic of Myles Cabot that, in desperate situations such as the one in which he now found himself, he always either becomes engrossed in some personally-detached scientific speculation as to his own fate, or else his thoughts become filled with some absurd doggerel ditty or jingle.
In the present instance, as he clung naked to his perch on the side of the pit, with the ant bear approaching him from below and the ant man covering him with a rifle from above, all that he could think of was that old Harvard Glee Club song about the darky, which ends with the words:
“O Lord, if you can’t help me,
For Heaven’s sake don’t help that bear!”
As the ten-foot jaws of the huge carnivorous beast came closer and closer to Cabot, the ant man on the bank could no longer restrain his glee, and began dancing up and down with joy.
Cabot watched his antics with disgust, and even shouted across at him: “Shut up, you d—— Eli! Do you think that that is a sportsmanlike way to act on the bleachers?”
But, of course, the ant didn’t hear, as Cabot was without his headset and artificial antennae.
The ant continued to dance, and the ant bear continued to crawl up the side of the pit, when suddenly the edge of the crater crumbled beneath the ant, and in an instant he, too, was catapulted down into the arena.