d.i.c.k Sand had suddenly broken off his sentence. A more vivid flash of lightning had just illuminated the whole plain.

"What have I seen there, a quarter of a mile off?" exclaimed d.i.c.k Sand.

"Yes, I also, I have seen--" replied old Tom, shaking his head.

"A camp, is it not?"

"Yes, Mr. d.i.c.k, it must be a camp, but a camp of natives!"

A new flash enabled them to observe this camp more closely. It occupied a part of the immense plain.

There, in fact, rose a hundred conical tents, symmetrically arranged, and measuring from twelve to fifteen feet in height. Not a soldier showed himself, however. Were they then shut up under their tents, so as to let the storm pa.s.s, or was the camp abandoned?

In the first case, whatever Heaven should threaten, d.i.c.k Sand must flee in the quickest manner. In the second, there was, perhaps, the shelter he asked.

"I shall find out," he said to himself; then, addressing old Tom: "Stay here. Let no one follow me. I shall go to reconnoiter that camp."

"Let one of us accompany you, Mr. d.i.c.k."

"No, Tom, I shall go alone. I can approach without being seen. Stay here."

The little troop, that followed Tom and d.i.c.k Sand, halted. The young novice left at once and disappeared in the darkness, which was profound when the lightning did not tear the sky.

Some large drops of rain already began to fall.

"What is the matter?" asked Mrs. Weldon, approaching the old black.

"We have perceived a camp, Mrs. Weldon," replied Tom; "a camp--or, perhaps, a village, and our captain wished to reconnoiter it before leading us to it."

Mrs. Weldon was satisfied with this reply. Three minutes after, d.i.c.k Sand was returning.

"Come! come!" he cried, in a voice which expressed his entire satisfaction.

"The camp is abandoned?" asked Tom.

"It is not a camp," replied the young novice; "it is not a village.

They are ant-hills!"

"Ant-hills!" exclaimed Cousin Benedict, whom that word aroused.

"Yes, Mr. Benedict, but ant-hills twelve feet high, at least, and in which we shall endeavor to hide ourselves."

"But then," replied Cousin Benedict, "those would be ant-hills of the warlike termite or of the devouring termite. Only those ingenious insects raise such monuments, which the greatest architects would not disown."

"Whether they be termites or not, Mr. Benedict," replied d.i.c.k Sand, "we must dislodge them and take their place."

"They will devour us. They will be defending their rights."

"Forward! Forward!"

"But, wait now!" said Cousin Benedict again. "I thought those ant-hills only existed in Africa."

"Forward!" exclaimed d.i.c.k Sand, for the last time, with a sort of violence. He was so much afraid that Mrs. Weldon might hear the last word p.r.o.nounced by the entomologist.

They followed d.i.c.k Sand with all haste. A furious wind had sprung up.

Large drops crackled on the ground. In a few moments the squalls of wind would become unbearable. Soon one of those cones which stood on the plain was reached. No matter how threatening the termites might be, the human beings must not hesitate. If they could not drive the insects away, they must share their abode.

At the bottom of this cone, made with a kind of reddish clay, there was a very narrow hole. Hercules enlarged it with his cutla.s.s in a few moments, so as to give a pa.s.sage even to a man like himself.

To Cousin Benedict's extreme surprise, not one of the thousands of termites that ought to occupy the ant-hill showed itself. Was, then, the cone abandoned?

The hole enlarged, d.i.c.k and his companions glided into it. Hercules disappeared the last, just as the rain fell with such rage that it seemed to extinguish the lightnings.

But those wind squalls were no longer to be feared. A happy chance had furnished this little troop with a solid shelter, better than a tent, better than a native's hut.

It was one of those termite cones that, according to Lieutenant Cameron's comparison, are more astonishing than the pyramids of Egypt, raised by the hands of men, because they have been built by such small insects.

"It is," said he, "as if a nation had built Mount Everest, the highest mountain of the Himalaya chain."

CHAPTER V.

ANTS AND THEIR DWELLING.

At this moment the storm burst with a violence unknown in temperate lat.i.tudes.

It was providential that d.i.c.k Sand and his companions had found this refuge!

In fact, the rain did not fall in distinct drops, but in streams of various thickness. Sometimes it was a compact ma.s.s forming a sheet of water, like a cataract, a Niagara. Imagine an aerial basin, containing a whole sea, being upset. Under such showers the ground was hollowed out, the plains were changed to lakes, the streams to torrents, the rivers, overflowing, inundated vast territories. In temperate zones the violence of the storms decreases according to their duration; but in Africa, however heavy they are, they continue for several entire days. How can so much electricity be collected in the clouds? How can such quant.i.ties of vapor be acc.u.mulated? It is very difficult to comprehend this. However, such are the facts, and one might suppose himself transported to the extraordinary epochs of the diluvian period.

Fortunately, the ant-cone, with its thick walls, was perfectly impervious. A beaver's hut, of well-beaten earth, could not have been more water-tight. A torrent could have pa.s.sed over it without a single drop of water filtering through its pores.

As soon as d.i.c.k Sand and his companions had taken possession of the cone they occupied themselves in examining its interior arrangement.

The lantern was lighted, and the ant-hill was sufficiently illuminated. This cone, which measured twelve feet in height inside, was eleven feet wide, except in its upper part, which rounded in the form of a sugar loaf. Everywhere the walls were about one foot in thickness, and there was a distance between the stories of cells which adorned them.

We may be astonished at the construction of such monuments, due to these industrious swarms of insects, but it is true that they are frequently found in the interior of Africa. Smeathman, a Dutch traveler of the last century, with four of his companions, occupied the top of one of these cones. In the Lounde, Livingstone observed several of these ant-hills, built of reddish clay, and attaining a height of fifteen and twenty feet. Lieutenant Cameron has many a time mistaken for a camp these collections of cones which dotted the plain in N'yangwe. He has even stopped at the foot of great edifices, not more than twenty feet high, but composed of forty or fifty enormous rounded cones, flanked with bell-towers like the dome of a cathedral, such as Southern Africa possesses.

To what species of ant was due, then, the prodigious style of architecture of these cones?

"To the warlike termite," Cousin Benedict had replied, without hesitating, as soon as he had recognized the nature of the materials employed in their construction.

And, in fact, the walls, as has been said, were made of reddish clay.

Had they been formed of a gray or black alluvian earth, they must have been attributed to the "termes mordax" or the "termes atrox." As we see, these insects have not very cheering names--a fact which cannot but please a strong entomologist, such as Cousin Benedict.

The central part of the cone, in which the little troop had first found shelter, and which formed the empty interior, would not have contained them; but large cavities, in close contact, made a number of divisions, in which a person of medium height could find refuge.