by Atta (pdf)
with him for some time in whispered words, urging that
we start at once to look for an opportunity to escape and
that, once free, we could easily find and fortify another
house such as the one we had lost. But it was all in vain,
and though in the end I spoke so heatedly that my captor
became alarmed and squeezed me with his beak, Atta
only shook his head mournfully and said that we had
much better resign ourselves to our fate. I was soon to
find that all Formicans have this fatalistic tendency.
Whenever there is no opportunity for immediate action
their resolution seems to take wings and they become as
meek and docile as aphids. For this reason most of them
make excellent slaves and can be trusted as no human
slaves could ever be. The Rubicundians, for instance, as
I later learned that this tribe was called, were outnumbered eight to one by their prisoners, yet never, so far as I could find out, had there been any uprising against
them.
Meanwhile our march was resumed; and at length,
after many hours, we arrived in the late hours of the
evening at what was apparently the Rubicundian stronghold, an underground castle of considerable extent. Here Atta and I were carried down a long, dark sloping passage and left in an underground room with a sentinel at the open entrance; and in this dungeon, again assailed
by exhaustion, I finally fell asleep once more.
Indeed, I think that by that time I really did not care
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whether I lived or died. I knew now that there was no
longer any mystery about my actual situation. There is a
curious finality about the truth; it both crushes and at the
same time lifts from the soul the burden of intolerable
doubt. Lost to the world as I now was for all practical
purposes, I could at least accept my fate and resolve to
concern myself no longer with the reasons for it. And the
release from struggle was as if I had swallowed an unpleasant but effective anodyne.
When I awoke it was still dark, though it was late in
the morning, and I felt immeasurably better. Our sentinel,
who turned out to be little more than an attendant,
brought us dried grain and informed us that he too was
a captive and that his name was Subser. He was of the
Cutter Caste, a slow russet-colored Formican and one of
Atta’s own countrymen, although he had come originally
from the capital, Fusa, not from Atta’s provincial city of
Forza. He told us in his slow, stupid way that in a few
days the Rubicundians would set forth on another raid
whose objective was a village some two hours to the west.
During the army’s absence, he said, we would be expected
to work for the guards at the gateway, and for that reason
we had better set about regaining our strength.
This news cheered me a little despite the melancholy
that our surroundings had induced in my battered self.
I even roused myself enough, as soon as Subser had gone
about his other duties, to suggest to Atta again that we
explore the possibility of escaping at once. For it was obvious that our captors were paying little attention to us, and it seemed unlikely that friendly captives like this
Subser would obstruct our departure or even give the
alarm.
Atta, however, rejected the suggestion as before. We
were in no condition to travel, he pointed out; I myself
was now unarmed; and I was quite mistaken about the
attitude of the captives or slaves toward escaping prisoners. No one could count on their apathy, for if they
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caught us in the slightest out-of-the-way action, they too
would set upon us as ferociously as any Rubicundian.
This unexpected fact temporarily dampened my en- .
thusiasm. But it did not suffice to end my pursuit of the
idea of escape. For the rest of the day I concentrated on
the problem, almost as if escape from the Rubicundians
would in itself produce some change in my condition
that would make it at least bearable. This peculiar pertinacity I can only explain now as a product of the suppressed horror that I felt over my whole situation. For, although I was scarcely conscious of it at the time, the final realization that I was not on some distant planet, but was
actually living as an insect on my own acres, reacted on
me in a most unexpected manner. I did not seek to explain it; I sought to act upon it. I did not despair; I felt impatient to be up and doing.
Incredible as my position was, reduced as I might be
to an unnoticeable pygmy where my former world was
concerned, nevertheless I was still a human being—a creature, in my judgment, infinitely superior to these armored Formieans among whom I found myself. In addition, intelligent and formidable as other tribes of Formieans might prove to be, these particular Rubicundians were
nothing more than high-grade savages, pure and simple.
Surely a resourceful man could still triumph over large
stupid insects, controlled very probably by instinct alone
and ill fitted to cope with any unusual or original set of
actions. At any rate such was my hope when our captivity
began, and it served both to rouse my native ingenuity
by setting me a problem and to preserve my sanity by
slamming the door on the very real despair that any prolonged consideration of my true situation could not have failed to evoke.
Fortunately several days passed before we were assigned to our work at the gateway—we were common laborers, I regret to say, carrying rock into the fields as
other workers brought it from the lower corridors—and
during this time I made a heartening discovery. No one
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seeming to be concerned in the slightest about what I
did, I set myself to a thorough tour of the whole underground castle; and behind what should be called the granary—at least, it was a room off the main dining hall
filled with various kinds of food—I found, heaped up in
a comer, all my former accouterments: ax, bow and
arrows, lasso, and even, beneath some refuse, my precious
lance. Evidently some Rubicundian had had them transported hither out of mere curiosity and then thrown them aside, for although they were in plain sight no one
was doing anything about them.
Their reappearance gladdened my heart, despite the
dirty condition of rope and metal, and during the next
two days I managed to carry off the whole lot at different times and hoard them in the dungeonlike chamber where we still lived. Here Subser saw them, as well as
many passing Rubicundians and countless slaves. But no
one displayed the slightest interest. Only Atta and I knew
what an inestimably valuable find they were, and we concealed our knowledge beneath an exterior of boredom and melancholy.
Their effect upon Atta was really remarkable. Even
before I had brought the last of them his eye perceptibly
brightened, and the desire for escape, which I had with
such ill success endeavored to instill in him, seemed at
once to return to him with extraordinary force. For him,
I suppose, they were not merely weapons, they were the
mark of my human superiority over all Formicans, including our conquerors. Without them I was worse
than helpless; with them, he felt, invincible. He at once began pumping Subser for details about the guards at the gateway and their habits, and he spent many hours with me trying to conjecture the exact direction in which our lost
house lay in relation to the castle where we were now
imprisoned.
Meanwhile our labor at the gateway was by no means
intolerable. We were supposed, of course, to work with
other slaves; but it was easy enough to avoid any hard
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labor, for it is the nature of the Formican to be always
busy about something, and I suppose it had never entered
the heads of any of the other slaves to attempt to shirk.
Even Atta did more work than was strictly necessary and
seemed a little put out when I called it ironically to his
attention.
As for the Rubicundians themselves, they were easy
masters who seemed to have little interest in what went
on among the slaves so long as there were always some
about to serve them with food or carry them on their
forays. For your true Rubicundian aristocrat never sets
foot to the ground except in battle, and he is always carried to and from the field. Indeed, war seemed to be the only incentive that could arouse these haughty chiefs to
any activity at all. At other times they sat about, eating,
drinking, polishing their armor, petting their little yellow
pets, and telling endless tales of old battles. They were
more like robber barons in some late Stone Age than anything else I can think of, and they showed little trace of what we call culture. On their raids, however, they were
brave and extraordinarily active and by far the best fighters among all the races of Formicans.
This was proved to me on the only raid on which I
accompanied them during my captivity—an attack on a
wooden city belonging to a tribe of Camponotans who
had never before been assailed. These Camponotans were
a very large and fierce tribe who lived half a day’s journey
to the west. And here let me put in a word concerning
the manner in which I am carrying on this narrative. It
may seem strange to you that after realizing the exact
nature of my predicament I should still be speaking of
obvious ants in the terms that I first found for them. But
it must be remembered that, placed as I was, the true
character of my new associates, although fully acknowledged inwardly, could hardly be held in focus during my hours of daily struggle.
I knew, for instance, that the dense jungle outside the
Rubicundian stronghold was in reality no moon jungle,
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or indeed any jungle at all. It was a meadow in western
Iowa, temporarily gone to grass. Nevertheless, in my situation it was a jungle and could be thought of as nothing else. Nor, being what I was, could I figure the creatures
I had been thrown with as anything other than the
strange race that I had first thought them. To realize that
they were actually not such creatures at all, but what we
call insects, involved too much imagination, and I finally
gave up the effort. Indeed, for weeks at a time the knowledge that Atta, for instance, was in reality an ant never entered my head. He presented none of the attributes
that I had previously associated with ants—except an admitted gargantuan resemblance--- and to all intents and purposes he was not an ant to me, a person who lived on
an equality with him. He was a new and distinct personality.
Likewise the Rubicundians and the Camponotans were
two quite distinct tribes of the species that we call ants;
but they appeared as Formicans to me. And it is only by
so characterizing them that I can ever convey the true
value of everything that happened to me.
To return, then, to the attack upon the Camponotans:
We started very early that morning, the warriors, in the
highest spirits, borne along by their slaves, and the slaves
tiiemselves in a great state of anticipatory excitement.
By noon we had reached the edge of the Camponotan
territory—a dark and gloomy land, swampy and sunless—
and I was well exhausted, for although the army followed
for the most part a well-worn path, the going was rough.
The path thus made merits a word of explanation. For
the Rubicundians although not noted for their eyesight,
can make and follow a trail in a most remarkable manner,
and this is a great advantage to them in going great distances. Indeed, I would defy any woodsman to find his way back by a mere casual recognition of visible landmarks in such a country as we traversed that day. For half an hour at a time we would pass through long winding tunnels, roofed and walled with huge brown sheets
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of what may have been dead leaves. These were crowded
with debris in places, opening out in spots upon bare
ground, but usually rising above the earth; sometimes as
high as twenty feet above it when our path crossed some
tangled brake of enormous grasses. These high crossings
grew more and more necessary as we approached what
the slaves called the Dark Country; for here the ground
became moist and soggy in every direction and exhaled
a strong odor of decay. When we finally reached the
edge of the Dark Country and the jagged, stumplike battlements of the Camponotan city loomed ahead of us, as dismal a sight confronted me as I have ever seen. For the
land around appeared like nothing except plain mud.
The warriors spread out at the foot of the brown battlements, their shining red armor a brave spot of color in the otherwise gloomy scene, and presently the assault
began. There was no real military discipline among the
warriors, I soon saw. Each one charged up the steep incline toward the entrances at the top without paying the slightest attention to his comrades. And the same lack of
order was observable among the Camponotans. They
made no attempt to await their foes in an advantageous
position, but rushed down to meet the assaulting party as
if afraid that they might vanish before a fight could be
begun.
The personal combats staged were daring and brave in
the extreme, and it ocurred to me as I watched from the
edge of the mud field that much could be accomplished
with such fighters if they were trained and disciplined in
genuine military tactics. Thus trained, the Rubicundians,
for instance, instead of allowing the battle to break up as
it presently did into a series of meaningless personal
duels, might easily have driven a single wedge of picked
fighters to the gateways and captured the whole city in jig
time—with a minimum of loss, too. As it was, they conquered finally by mere ferocity and force of numbers and at a great loss of warriors, driving the defenders back
and plunging after them through the gateways, but leav
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ing great heaps of dead and dying behind them. For pure
carnage I cannot imagine anything more sanguinary. But
of military genius there was none.
For some time the battle raged in the high streets and
corridors of the Camponotan city. Then, by two’s and
three’s, the Rubicundians began to reappear, and in
; another hour the column was marching home, the slaves
—among whom were Atta and I—laden with booty and
captives, the victors boasting loudly of their individual
skill and prowess.
This was the only real battle that I saw among the
Rubicundians, and I am unable to report further on their
expeditions; for there was considerable dissatisfaction
over the smallness of the booty I had been able to carry,
and thereafter I was left with the more aged labor slaves
at the gate while both Atta and Subser went off on the
other glorified robberies that the Rubicundians called
war.
This outcome, naturally, was not at all contrary to my
liking. For it was about this time that I decided finally
to test fortune by having Subser carry my lance to the
dump outside the castle gate, and for my purposes it was
vital that I be on hand during the daylight hours to see
that some guard or slave did not carelessly bear it back.
First, however, came my decision to test Subser himself. And here I should go back a little in my story.
I think I have already said that this worthy countryman of Atta’s was a little on the stupid side. But he seemed to mean well, and as time went on he became less
and less a sentinel or guard and more and more an associate. Indeed, after the Camponotan expedition we were little more than three slaves together. For after that
episode he appeared to feel a liking or conceive an admiration for Atta, and though Formicans are as a rule extremely reticent, it was not long before he was beginning to tell us what amounted to the story of his life.
He had not, it appeared, been a slave for any considerable period. Several years before, while on a distant leaf
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cutting expedition from Fusa, he had been cut off by a
small party of Rubicundians and taken prisoner. Since
then he had served his new masters in many capacities,
and he knew nearly everything there was to know about
them. What interested Atta and me, however, was the
account he gave of the manner in which he had marked
in his memory the different landmarks that he hoped