ht away, are
shut up in telegraph office. Bram, former member of Greystoke
Expedition, said to be in charge of swarm, with intention of
obliterating human race. Every living thing at Settler's Station
destroyed, and swarm moving south.

It was a small-town paper a hundred miles from New York that took a
chance on publishing this report from the International Press, in spite
of frantic efforts on the parts of the head office to recall it after it
had been transmitted. This paper published the account as an April
Fool's Day joke, though later it took to itself the credit for having
believed it. But by the time April Fool's Day dawned all the world knew
that the account was, if anything, an under-estimate of the fearful
things that were happening "down under."

* * * * *

It was known now that the swarm of monsters had originated in the Great
Victoria Desert, one of the worst stretches of desolation in the world,
situated in the south-east corner of Western Australia. Their numbers
were incalculable. Wimbush, the aviator, who was attempting to cross the
continent from east to west, reported afterward that he had flown for
four days, skirting the edge of the swarm, and that the whole of that
time they were moving in the same direction, a thick cloud that left a
trail of dense darkness on earth beneath them, like the path of an
eclipse. Wimbush escaped them only because he had a ceiling of twenty
thousand feet, to which apparently the beetles could not soar.

And this swarm was only about one-fourth of the whole number of the
monsters. This was the swarm that was moving westward, and subsequently
totally destroyed all living things in Kalgoorlie, Coolgardie, Perth,
and all the coastal cities of Western Australia.

Ships were found drifting in the Indian Ocean, totally destitute of
crews and passengers; not even their skeletons were found, and it was
estimated that the voracious monsters had carried them away bodily,
devoured them in the air, and dropped the remains into the water.

All the world knows now how the sea elephant herd on Kerguelen Island
was totally destroyed, and of the giant shells that were found lying
everywhere on the deserted beaches, in positions that showed the
monsters had in the end devoured one another.

Mauritius was the most westerly point reached by a fraction of the
swarm. A little over twenty thousand of the beetles reached that lovely
island