by Atta (pdf)
Atta grumbled at this, but when I offered to let him
do the investigating while I stood watch, his sense of
fairness got the better of him and he consented.
Beside the huge rock behind which the Formicans had
disappeared there was another smaller one, some five feet
high and flat on top. Toward it I crept on tiptoe, mounted
it without too much difficulty, and wriggled to the farther side where I could overlook the entrance to the Formicans’ underground camp. This was merely a circular hole four feet or so across, about which were heaped the stones and debris that had been carried out from below, I suppose to enlarge the space underground. There was no sign of life about, although I knew from what
Atta had told me that there would be one or more sentinels on guard inside the entrance. I lay down with nothing but the top of my head visible and notched an arrow to the string to be ready for whatever might happen.
After a time, however, as nothing did happen, my curiosity got the better of my caution, and, being convinced that our enemies were busily engaged on underground
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affairs of their own, I did a very foolish thing: I crawled
back over the flat rock to see what my companion was
doing about the aphids. He had climbed up on the
smooth green trunk of the creeper and was standing beside one of tire creatures, leaning over. Before I could make out what he was doing I heard a slight noise behind me; and, turning, I saw one of the hostile Formicans standing not five feet away, regarding me with a vicious
mixture of fear and anger.
With a shout to Atta I sprang at him, whirling my ax
over my head. But he was too quick for me. He turned
and half scrambled, half fell down the declivity between
the two rocks; and before I could reach him he dived
down the slope toward the camp entrance to give the
alarm.
There was but one chance for us, of course: to stop
him before he reached the gateway. For if he could once
get inside and warn his companions, we should soon be
surrounded and overcome. Recovering my ax, I leaped
after him and stumbled down toward the mound of dirt
and debris at the gate, with Atta close on my heels. But
I was not quick enough. As I reached the mound the
black head of another Formican appeared above the surface, and behind him I could see the shining armor of many others. The tunnel-like entrance was veritably
swarming with angry soldiery.
Fortunately my first quarry had only one idea: to reach
the gateway. In this he succeeded, but at the cost of colliding with an emerging comrade, a confusion of which I was quick to take advantage. Without even thinking I
swung up my ax and brought it down with a dull crash
on his armored head, then turned and struck with all my
might at my new enemy. I hit him squarely on the forehead, too, and with a shriek he fell back on to his pushing fellows below. They, undaunted by the suddenness of my attack, dragged him back and with angry cries
pressed on to the surface.
I had the position of vantage, now, however, and for
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five long minutes my weapon rose and fell as regularly as
the ax of a woodcutter felling a tree. Every blow went
home on a half upright struggling Formican, crushing
black armor and sheering through legs and feelers, as
savage after savage tried to get out and at me.
Once one of them got past me, but as he went by I
fetched him a blow with the side of the ax that sent him
spinning toward Atta, and there was not much left of
him when Atta had finished. It was hot work while it
lasted, and yet I had no fear of what might happen
should I fail to hold the gate. I was conscious only of
the fierce exultation of feeling the ax bite home and of
seeing my enemies fall back crushed and maimed after
each onslaught. It was the lust of battle, I suppose, such
as I have since heard veteran soldiers admit after certain
campaigns against bloodthirsty enemies; but it was the
first time I had ever experienced it. Indeed, when finally
the Formicans gave back and the gateway was clear
except for corpses, I leaned on my ax almost like some
exultant Hercules who had at last finished an allotted
task.
I experienced none of the queasiness of my former experience.
“How many do you suppose there are?” I asked my
companion, who had stood hack for the most part during
the fight, since there had not been room for two of us
at the gate when my ax was swinging.
He answered rather coldly that he supposed there
might be fifty or a hundred more of them, and even in
my exultation I could see that he felt that I had taken
more than my fair share of the fighting. I paid no attention to his tone, for I was thinking hard now, trying to devise some plan that would enable us to keep the
Formicans bottled up in their camp until we could make
good our escape. Indeed, it was obvious that unless we
could hit upon something new we should be obliged to
stay at the gate until we had killed or disabled all of
them, a procedure that began to seem to me very dubi
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ous. What was needed was something that would delay
any pursuit of us until we could cross the valley and
climb up on the plateau again; for Atta, even when unburdened by me, could not travel so fast as these lighter and more active savages.
“Couldn’t we block this gate?” I exclaimed. “Isn’t there
some way we can bottle them up for a while?”
I asked this question as much of myself as of Atta. But
I had underrated him, it soon appeared. Immediately,
without answering, he turned from me and began dragging out the largest stones from the heaps about us.
These he rolled and dragged toward me, and I stood
back, ax poised, eye on the dark gateway. There was
still a faint rustling in the tunnel and occasionally the
flicker of reflected light on black armor. Once a head
with cautious feelers came tentatively up, only to duck
back again as its owner caught sight of my ax. But no
rush of enemies came, and Atta worked like a beaver.
Soon he had a pile of rocks four feet high, none of them
large enough to stop the entrance, but the whole sufficient to block the passage.
He was about to start throwing them down when I
stopped him. "Wait,” I said. “This won’t do. They can
carry rocks off as fast as we roll them down. We shall
have to find a single big one first—one large enough to
cover the tunnel. Then we can pile all these small ones
on top of it. If it’s heavy enough, they’ll have to dig
around it if they want to get out.”
“I’ll get one,” said Atta briefly. “A big one.”
He turned and hurried away and was back presently,
dragging a huge flat rock nearly five feet across. This he
flung down, tilted it on one side with no apparent effort,
although it looked heavy enough to require a dozen
men’s strength, and then let it fall directly across the
mouth of the tunnel, instantly blocking all egress from it.
In another second he was at work piling the smaller
&
nbsp; stones upon it, and in a few minutes he had heaped the
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stones so high and heavy on its flat surface that it was
beyond anyone’s power to raise it from beneath.
“There,” he said, standing back and surveying his work.
“Now we can do what we please. They won’t bother us
again today.”
“Unless,” I suggested, “they have another exit somewhere.”
Atta thought not. These were mere savages, accustomed to using but one gate, and habit was so strong among them that they were unlikely to have dug a second entrance. Also, it would not occur to them to try to dig another way out until each one had become perfectly
sure of his own inability to use the old way.
“Well, then,” said I, “how about getting ourselves a
couple of aphids and taking them along?—if they are
aphids,” I added.
They were aphids, Atta admitted, he had already tasted
their milk. He would show me if I liked. Together, without a glance at the dead Formicans lying around us, we went back to the creeper, and he showed me a semitransparent amber-colored substance dripping on the green trunk. It was rather sticky to the touch, but when
I tasted it I gave an exclamation of surprise.
“Why,” I said, “it’s like honey! Milk and honey! Nectar!
These creatures must be something like bees.”
“Bees?” he looked at me doubtfully.
“Of course,” I said, “you’ve never seen them. But it’s
too long to explain at present. By George! Nectar! Who
would have supposed such a thing? We must certainly
take two or three of these fellows home with us.”
I had found what I had come for, and now I was
anxious to get home again before dark, as we could easily
do if we started at once. But Atta had decided that he
wanted to explore the approach to the green uplands,
and since he gave as his reason the possibility that, once
on the uplands, we could follow the top of the cliff
around the rim of the valley to where we had entered, I
did not object. I insisted, however, that we must take
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three of the aphids with us, and upon Atta’s agreeing I
lifted three of them from their creeper, tied their feet
with the strands of rope that I always carried in my
pockets, and slung them across my shoulder. They manifested not the slightest surprise or alarm at what must have seemed to them an extraordinary procedure; indeed, I always found them as mild and docile as the cows they so weirdly resembled in purpose if not in appearance. They were very light, too, being slenderly built, and I had no difficulty in carrying them, though I
will admit to a slight uneasiness regarding their long
bills, which were of necessity in rather uncomfortably
close proximity to my unprotected body. But evidently
they did not regard me as likely to furnish a very succulent repast, for they tucked their bills under their bodies.
And a few minutes later, when Atta had carried all of us
to the edge of the uplands, I forgot all about them in my
wonder at the stupendous green jungle that greeted our
gaze.
For the foliage on the uplands, although of the same
character as the bamboolike jungle that surrounded our
house, grew here in great tangled masses like giant tufts,
and the ground was so encumbered with dead trunks
and twisted fibers that to penetrate it was like nothing so
much as crawling through a hurricane forest or the ruins
of a thousand wooden buildings twisted by a cyclone.
“We might as well go back,” I said at once. “I couldn’t
get through that stuff, and you couldn’t carry me. As it
is, we shan’t be home before dark.”
Atta was about to reply when a movement behind one
of the giant tufts caught my eye, and, peering into the
gloom beneath some dead foliage, I made out two eyes
regarding me intently. With a low word of warning to
my companion I fitted an arrow swifty to the string and
let fly. But for once I missed. I sprang back just in time
as some yellow creature pounced out, slashing viciously
at me with his hooked jaws.
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“Look out!” called Atta. “Watch his jaws. He rips from
below.”
It was an urgent warning, and I obeyed it. But as I
crouched and drew my dagger my heel caught on a loose
stone, and I fell on one knee. Before I could recover my
balance the beast was upon me, and I gave myself up
for lost. But to my surprise the yellow creature paid no
attention at all to me. Instead he seized one of the
aphids, and he had all but torn the unfortunate animal
to pieces before Atta rushed up and put an end to everything with one slash of his powerful beak.
“An aphid killer,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone, looking down at the beast as I rose and brushed the dust from my clothes. “He wasn’t interested in you. They seldom
attack anything but aphids. But they’re dangerous if you
let them get under you.”
“Well, he’s done for one aphid,” I said grimly. “I suppose we can’t risk going down into the valley for another one.”
“No,” said Atta, “but we’re up level with the cliff now,
and there are plenty of creepers along it. We shall probably see more aphids on our way around,”
With this I had to be content. We started home, and
eventually Atta was as good as his word. I recovered my
arrow from its thicket before we went. Soon we struck
the narrow open plateau, where Atta carried all of us at
a speed that put travel in the valley below to shame. At
one point the cliff made an almost right-angle turn. Here
there were dozens of giant creepers on the stone hills,
and on one of these Atta found another group of aphids,
from which he selected a young juicy one. So our loss
was made good before we reached my ancient rusting
shelter and plunged once more into our own familiar
jungle.
Then it was only a matter of three hours to home. We
reached it without further adventure than an occasional
glimpse of prowling forest beasts and, once, a solitary
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red-armored Formican, whom I saw far ahead as he
crossed our path and disappeared behind a clump of
trees.
So w e lived for many days in our gnarled, secluded
house in the jungle while I learned to milk our new
aphids. Nectar graced our table in small wooden jars
which I hollowed out, and Atta went foraging for the
green creepers on which the animals fed in safety behind our rapidly growing thistle hedge. In different circumstances it might almost have been an idyllic existence, and it is with regret that I approach the day when it all
ended; the day of which for many long years thereafter
I could not bear to think.
Yet first I feel that I must say more of the strange
friendship that had grown up between Atta and myself
during the course of the adventures I have been relating: a friendship based at first on our common necessities, but becoming deeper and stronger as the summer grew along, until finally the bond between us had become more like the attachment between two favorite brothers than
the surface feeling that usually masquerades under the name of friendship.
I have never known, in the course of a normally long
life, a character more admirable when considered in its
larger aspect than that of this strange person. (I cannot
bring myself to call him creature.) Certain characteristics, indeed, when considered from our narrow human standpoint, might fairly be censured; but his other quali
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ties of mind and heart so far outweighed them that when
fair allowance was made for his utterly foreign upbringing and mode of life I was only too glad to admit that here was a person whom anyone might well be proud to
call his friend.
I do not know what it was that made him different
from others of his race, or what it was that attracted
him to me at first. But I gathered afterwards that I was
the first person to come into his life who had ever
released the emotions of his heart or his desire for a
companionship of the mind. His relatives and associates
—though he rarely spoke of them except by way of illustration-had been trained from early youth, after the manner of the wellnigh universal Formican education, in
the rigid pattern of absolute subservience to a racial
ideal. In the communities of his people—as I afterwards
saw proved—this ideal had long ago taken the form of a
caste-dominated, highly efficient society, to the simple
objective aims of which all else was subordinated in a
truly incredible manner.
This conception, of which I shall have occasion to
speak graphically later in connection with my own subsequent adventures, had never allowed Atta even to admit to any of the instincts of sympathy, kindness, or consideration of others that seem natural to the human heart. On the contrary, from childhood these instincts
had been stifled in him whenever they appeared. When
he first encountered me, therefore, he was almost unaware that he even possessed the simple emotions and feelings that in mankind have been the delight of friends
and adventurers for ages.
In their place was a settled dour habit of work without play, plus a veritable distaste for thought, so marked at first that it was only with the greatest difficulty that