e other members of the party were at a loss to account for his strange
actions, other than by the hypothesis that he had been seized with
sudden insanity; for, with an unearthly yell, he leaped into the air
swinging his arms and legs like the wings of an ungainly windmill, and
landed, after a short but successful flight, far out in the water.

As he came to the surface he took up the yell where he had left off and
again began the windmill motions to the accompaniment of incoherent
profanity. Then he went down again. By this time his strange conduct was
perfectly understood by his companions, for they had themselves been
attacked by the same insidious foe. A swarm of yellow-jacket hornets,
proverbially mad, had descended upon them without apparent provocation,
and wholly without warning.

As soon as the wily yellowjackets discovered that their prey was in the
water, they hovered about over the surface, striking at everything that
came up. And while mankind is, in a limited way, amphibious, surely he
makes no claim of extensive submarine ability. This fact the murderous
hordes seemed to have taken into consideration in carrying out their
attack.

By painful stages the victims worked their way downstream until they
were out of range. Then they dragged themselves up on the bank and
started what looked like a cartoon of a mud-slinging campaign. To an
idle passerby a group of full grown human beings with their heads and
often their bodies completely poulticed in black mud would have been an
amusing sight. But on this occasion not so much as a suspicion of a
smile crossed the face of any person present. An incipient laugh would
doubtless have been punished by immediate execution.

The only observers who were not among the suffering participants were in
no mood for smiles. They lay absolutely motionless back in the bushes
and devoutly hoped that their labored breathing and pounding heartbeats
would not be overheard. The affair had got away from them entirely.
There was no telling what would happen if their part in it should be
discovered.

Not until it was quite dark did the badly stung bathers dare to return
for their clothes. The hornets were gone. And the languid stillness of
the summer night was broken only by their grim tokens of exclamation.

Some time after the last suffering victim had dragged his weary feet
down the path leading from the pool, two dark shadows cautiously emerged
from the shrubbery.

"Let's beat