ound that it had lost an antenna,
and its body was crushed. When the ball of fighters cleared, twelve
small ants were seen clinging to the legs and heads of the mutilated
giants, and now and then these would loosen their hold on each other,
turn, and crush one of their small tormenters. Several times I saw a
Medium rush up and tear a small ant away, apparently quite insane with
excitement.

Occasionally the least exhausted giant would stagger to his four and
a half remaining legs, hoist his assailant, together with a mass of
the midgets, high in air, and stagger for a few steps, before falling
beneath the onrush of new attackers. It made me wish to help the great
insect, who, for aught I knew, was doomed because he was
different--because he had dared to be an individual.

I left them struggling there, and half an hour later, when I returned,
the episode was just coming to a climax. My Atta hero was exerting his
last strength, flinging off the pile that assaulted him, fighting all
the easier because of the loss of his heavy body. He lurched forward,
dragging the second giant, now dead, not toward the deserted trail or
the world of jungle around him, but headlong into the lines of stupid
leaf-carriers, scattering green leaves and flower-petals in all
directions. Only when dozens of ants threw themselves upon him, many
of them biting each other in their wild confusion, did he rear up for
the last time, and, with the whole mob, rolled down into the yawning
mouth of the Atta nesting-hole, disappearing from view, and carrying
with him all those hurrying up the steep sides. It was a great battle.
I was breathing fast with sympathy, and whatever his cause, I was on
his side.

The next day both giants were lying on the old, disused trail; the
revolt against absolute democracy was over; ten thousand ants passed
to and fro without a dissenting thought, or any thought, and the
Spirit of the Attas was content.

VIII

THE ATTAS AT HOME

Clambering through white, pasty mud which stuck to our boots by the
pound, peering through bitter cold mist which seemed but a thinner
skim of mud, drenched by flurries of icy drops shaken from the
atmosphere by a passing moan and a crash, breathing air heavy with a
sweet, horrible, penetrating odor--such was the world as it existed
for an hour one night, while I and the Commandant of _Douaumont_
wandered about completely lost, on the top of his own fort. We finally
stumbled on the li