If I had been sure of this, I would have spoiled Mr. Ant’s sport for him very soon, you may be sure, and set the poor caterpillar free. But I never heard of an ant’s being cruel; and if it were really for dinner for his family that he was working so hard, I thought he ought to be helped, and not hindered.
Just then I heard a sharp cry overhead. I looked up, and there was an enormous hawk, sailing round in circles, with two small birds flying after him. They were pouncing down on his head, and then darting away, and all the time making shrill cries of fright and hatred.
I knew very well what that meant. Mr. Hawk was also out trying to do some marketing for his dinner. He had his eye on some little birds in their nest, and there were the father and mother birds driving him away.
You wouldn’t have believed that two such little birds could drive off such a big creature as the hawk, but they did. They seemed to fairly buzz round his head just as flies buzz round a horse’s head.
At last he gave up the quest and flew off so far that he vanished in the blue sky, and the little birds came skimming home again into the forest.
“Well, well,” said I, “the little people are stronger than the big ones, after all! Where has my ant gone?”
Sure enough! It hadn’t been two minutes that I had been watching the hawk and the birds, but in that two minutes the ant and the caterpillar had disappeared. At last I found them,—where do you think? In a fold of my coat, on which I was sitting!
The ant was running round and round the caterpillar. I shook the fold out, and as soon as the cloth lay straight and smooth, the ant fastened his nippers into his prey and started off as fast as ever.
I suppose if I could have seen his face, and had understood the language of ants’ features, I should have seen plainly written there, “Dear me, what sort of a country was that I tumbled into?”