"I'll never forget my walk along that narrow beam to the bank. The bees were all over me in a moment. My hands and face felt as if they were being punctured with red-hot splinters. Before I'd gone ten steps my eyes were closed so tight I couldn't see.
"I'd have gone off the beam head first if it hadn't been for Lancy. He had on gloves, and mosquito-netting over his head. But they crawled up his sleeves and down his neck, and stung him bad. Yet he didn't falter. With one hand stretched back and grasping mine, he walked cool and straight for the bank, as if he'd been on solid ground, instead of two hundred feet in the air.
"Blind and almost crazy from the stings, I stumbled along behind him. Every step was agony. I was almost tempted to jump from the beam and go down to be crushed to pulp on the boulders. The only thing that saved me was Lancy's hand, cool, firm and strong.
"'Steady! Steady!' he kept saying. I heard him through the shooting, burning pains, and it saved my reason. At last it didn't seem as if I could take another step.
"'Let go!' I cried, trying to get my hand loose; but he dragged me on.
"'In a minute,' said he; and all at once I felt the earth under my feet.
"I wasn't so far gone but I gave the hand I'd been holding a grip that squeezed the fingers together. It was all the thanks I could offer just then. Lancy squeezed back. Then everybody turned to and helped fight the bees off us.
"It was weeks before I got over those stings. Lancy had suffered, too, but of course not so badly. I don't know that he ever knew why I gripped his hand so hard. I was too much ashamed to tell him of the grudge I'd held. But I do know that after that I looked on him as one of my best friends. He'd saved my life, and a friend can't do much more for you than that."
THE INTELLIGENCE OF ANTS
By Sir John Lubbock