Читать книгу Consider Her Ways - Frederick Philip Grove - Страница 7

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The order in which we set out, seven months after we had begun preparations, was as follows. The van, to the number of two or three hundred, was composed of scattered individuals and groups of particularly powerful physique and intrepid spirit. All of them were volunteers, which insured at least that they did not fear but rather relished their task. Immediately behind them came a corps of skilled signallers, specially trained to emit the most pungent and fast-diffusing scents by which to give warning and information as to what was happening in front.

Then followed a massed body of fighters, commanded from the rear by Assa-ree. These formed a solid front and two solid flanks. Their rear was supposed at all times to form a hollow crescent enclosing that body which I have called the brains of the expedition and in which no particular discipline or marching order was observed. It was followed by another massed body of carriers and fighters who again enclosed the central body with a crescentic arrangement of their forward ranks.

Since the country which we had to traverse before reaching the Great Narrows was well-mapped and known in every detail, we travelled, to begin with, by night. This distance of 95,000,000 common antlengths¹ was covered by forced marches in 150 nights--no mean achievement.

¹ A common antlength (length of a media) is 1/2 inch. 750 miles. E.

When, after this forward thrust, we made our first stop, we were in a peculiar country of great rocky mountains clothed with verdure and studded with lakes, but exhibiting also more or less barren uplands adorned with only a scanty vegetation of Cecropia and Acacia trees.

So far, provisioning had offered no difficulty. Our march had led past a good many friendly cities of our own kind where arrangements had been made in advance to supply the High Command with shelter and food. The army as such had never entered these cities; for Assa-ree had undertaken to look after her own commissariat; and when I found that she relied entirely on foraging raids, I rested content with this arrangement. It was essential to reduce our demands on hospitably-inclined colonies to a minimum; and even when we found that these fighting hordes of ours reverted very largely to the aboriginal custom of feeding on carrion, I did not object. For no matter how we, the High Command, fared, it was important to conduct matters in such a manner as always to provide amply for the rank and file.

But now we were entering upon terra incognita; and though we met at once with other tribes closely related to ourselves, the Œcodomas, we were, for the first time, to have the experience of finding our overtures tending towards friendly intercourse repulsed.

To our agreeable surprise, Assa-ree had proved herself equal to any emergency; but while we continued our advance, literally fighting our way on all sides, we, the High Command, had at last to go without food for forty or fifty days. And then our whole advance was brought to a stop.

We came to a point where an unbroken chain of Œcodoma cities reached from coast to coast in a north-south direction; more than once we hurled massed bodies of our troops against this chain; nothing was gained. We had to encamp.

I called a council of war to meet at night. I well remember the occasion. We were at an elevation of at least 48,000 antlengths above the sea. All about, we were surrounded by a barren, rocky highland with a broken surface. In front, at a distance of 63,000 ants, rose a forbidding escarpment to a height of 3,600 antlengths; but its crown was covered with a dense forest reaching westward; it was within the margin of that forest that the line of Œcodoma cities barred our way. Almost overhead stood a full moon; and the atmosphere, in the open, was chilly enough to stiffen our joints. But the meeting was held in a recess of perpendicular rocks which retained the heat of the day. To our left, the remainder of our central body had gone to rest in a manner which we had learned from our bitterest enemies, the Eciton Hamatum. This method was as follows: two of the strongest ants attached themselves with their fore-legs to a low branch of a dead acacia. To their hind-legs four were clinging; and so on, till, in the ninth or tenth tier, the flaring curtain thus formed by living bodies reached a width sufficient to fold over from both sides and to enclose a hollow funnel which was filled by the remaining ants in a dense cluster. The army was encamped in a similar manner south of us and out of sight.

When I opened our deliberations, I gave it as my opinion that, at no matter what cost of time or energy, we must establish friendly relations with our cousins, the Œcodomas; and two of the group-leaders, Bissa-tee, the zoologist, and Lemma-nee, the geographer, were inclined to agree with me. But Anna-zee, the botanist, pointed out, not perhaps without a semblance of justice, that it was too late for attempts at conciliation; blood, she said, had flowed on both sides; it could not be wiped out. So I asked her what she had to propose; and she replied sardonically that, once blood had been shed, there was only one remedy and that was to shed more of it. Anna-zee, as we shall see, often had the disconcerting knack of brushing aside what she called self-deceptions. At this very moment I saw Assa-ree stepping into the gap between the walls of our retreat.

By way of greeting she raised her antennæ and then brought them down with a sweeping movement. Both Anna-zee and Bissa-tee spoke to me later in admiration of the physical grace of this great ant-of-war; both remarked upon the proud humility of her bearing. I could not quite understand such a misinterpretation; but, since her greeting was exclusively addressed to me, I being the only ant she had to consult, they did perhaps not have a full opportunity to see her in the same light in which I saw her. I could not overlook the distinct outward swing which she knew how to impart to the movement of her antennæ: it was an unmistakably ironic curve. The scents with which she proposed a way out of our difficulty were respectful enough; yet, to me they seemed to be too exaggerated to be quite sincere. Very briefly, she engaged to induce any colony of Œcodomas to leave their city for our special accommodation, without the use of force. I was on the point of asking her why, if such was in her power, she had not offered to do so before blood had been shed. But my colleagues closed with her offer so enthusiastically that I thought it best to observe a discreet silence.

I must give Assa-ree her due: she was as good as her scent. Next morning we entered a deserted city which contained a wealth of fungus-gardens quite beyond our requirements. The rest of our High Command, even Anna-zee and Bissa-tee, far and away the most eminent of our scholars, accepted this service as a sort of miracle that must not be too closely questioned; and, for the moment, it solved an urgent problem.

But before we moved on, I made it my business to investigate. My motive was neither that of an idle curiosity nor that of a desire to spy on Assa-ree. But I considered that the safety of the whole expedition depended on what I am tempted to call my own omniscience with regard to the doings, the wishes, and the thoughts of all its members.

Now, at the very time of entering this marvellously well-built city of the Œcodomas I had been struck by the presence of a faint smell that seemed suspicious. It was not the race-smell of any leaf-cutting ant; nor was it the adventitious nest-smell peculiar to every individual colony. These cannot be mistaken by any experienced contact-odour sense such as I flatter myself to possess. It was an alien smell, hard to identify because of its faintness. It had, apparently, not been questioned by anyone else.

The most minute examination of the main entrance-craters failed to furnish the slightest clue. Then, one day, bent on recreation, I took a turn in the forest; and quite accidentally I came across a wasp on the ground which seemed to be expiring; and instantly I recognized the suspicious smell which here was pungent and pronounced. This unfortunate wasp had been surprised by an army of Eciton Hamatum; had been deprived of her power of motion; had been partially dismembered; and had then, for some mysterious reason, been left behind. I hurried back to our temporary abode and, armed with this clue, soon discovered, in a crevice of one of the side-entrances, a tiny fragment of the abdomen of this very wasp--a fragment so bitten into and almost chewed up by the powerful sickle-jaws of Ecitons as to make it practically unrecognizable.

How Assa-ree had got hold of this fragment I can, of course, not tell; but her scheme now explained itself. These particular Ecitons must be so powerful, and their power so well known that the mere suspicion of their approach was enough to put to flight a whole colony of Œcodomas. This Assa-ree knew; and that was the most disquieting feature of the whole thing. I knew, and I knew that Assa-ree knew, that we could not forever avoid meeting an army of these Ecitons; I anticipated, and I suspected that Assa-ree anticipated, that we should be attacked. If we were, it would be her task to defend us, it was hard to say with what prospect of success: an issue before which the stoutest heart might be permitted to tremble. Yet she could use this fear of the Ecitons to play a joke upon a whole nation of ants closely related to ourselves and, in a manner, upon me and my associates. It was not a thought to allay my secret disquietudes. Above all, I knew from that day on that sooner or later matters must come to an issue between her and me.

To finish this topic by anticipation: a further discovery was in store for me. Assa-ree had driven to flight, not only the one colony of Œcodomas which she had promised she would persuade, by peaceful means, temporarily to abandon their city for our convenience, but the whole line of colonies stretching across, the Narrows of the continent. This I discovered in the course of the following days.

One night, the leaders of the High Command being again in conference to discuss the best route to follow from that point, she entered our conclave a second time. The meeting being held in a subterranean chamber, we were in utter darkness, and I could not watch her demeanour in detail. But in her greeting to me, in the course of which she touched first my antennæ, then my thorax and head, I seemed again to detect that exaggeration of deference which could not but conceal her irony. The import of her message was this. Since we should necessarily have to return by the same route, she would like to point out the expediency of keeping this gap open. Lemma-nee, the geographer, was so amazed at the boldness of the proposal that she squirted out, "Can it be done?" Assa-ree brushed the question aside by the slightest motion of her antennæ and repeated her offer in a scent of affected weariness. I resolved to embrace the plan and signified as much. I could feel Assa-ree stiffening: she interpreted my lack of amazement as an affront. Yet her resentment was expressed by nothing but an increase in deference. You wish it, she signified, in scents still more subdued than mine had been, and it is done.

Next morning, when we had left the city, I ascertained, while the ranks were being formed, that she had cunningly concealed a tiny fragment of the same wasp in each of the main entrances of the no less than 103 Œcodoma cities which formed the barrier across the narrowest point of the continent.