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As she works downward, she parts off the tube of the nest with horizontal floors of a finer and harder mud, and inside each storey places some five spiders, and among them the precious egg, or eggs, which is to feed on them when hatched.
And they tend our modern machinery as deftly as of old they twirled the distaff and worked the spinning-wheel; and as steadily as they used to trudge the rope walks and spin, like spiders, from the masses of flax or hemp at their waists." "The females want religion without a doubt," said Benny.
The whole place was festooned with cobwebs, not light films, such as the housewife's broom sweeps away before they have become a permanent residence, but vast gray draperies, loaded with dust, sprinkled with yellow powder from the beams where the worms were gnawing day and night, the home of old, hairy spiders who had, lived there since they were eggs and would leave it for unborn spiders who would grow old and huge like themselves in it, long after the human tenants had left the mansion for a narrower home.
In the corners hung spiders' webs; in the rooms stood dust in heaps; pigeons built their nests in the cornices and sparrows in the beams. Heaps of withered leaves lay rotting in the garden; weeds grew over the tanks; the flower-beds were hidden by jungle.
You may think it a strange notion, but I attribute all my ill-luck to spiders: "If you wish to live and thrive, Let a spider run alive." I am not superstitious as a rule, but I cannot help thinking that my wholesale massacre of this obnoxious insect has something to do with my misfortunes by way of retribution. I hate spiders! Nearly everybody has a pet aversion of some sort.
Animal life exists in considerable quantities in many subterranean regions, such as beetles, eyeless spiders, scorpions, millipedes, and crustaceans. The most curious is the Proteus anguinus, which breathes at the same time through lungs and gills. It has a long eel-like body, with an elongated head, and four very short and thin legs.
"Nansen is nothing to you! You ought to have a medal for daring explorations," said the other gentleman, but nobody gave us one, and, of course, we did not want any reward for doing our duty, however tight and cobwebby. The cellars proved to be well stocked with spiders and old furniture, but no toads or snakes, which few, if any, regretted. Snakes are outcasts from human affection.
'Look sharp! cried a voice that fell from the sky above them. 'Here come the Morning Spiders, On their gossamer outriders! This time it was the Lamplighter flashing to and fro as he put the stars out one by one. He was in a frantic hurry; he extinguished whole groups of them at once. The Pleiades were the last to fade. Rogers heard him and came back into himself.
My mum and my two younger brothers, Sameer and Milind returned to Goa soon thereafter, but I stayed on with Grandpapa in Mumbai for a few more days, since I was to proceed from there directly to Chennai where I would spend the next two and a half months in the pleasant company of spiders, earthworms and my all-time favourites, crocodiles and snakes.
What induced these millions of spiders to go up at the same time, of course I do not know, and can only suppose that they went up to feed; but, as I have said previously, I never saw one of this species preying upon anything. The idea that they go aloft to kill the Furia Infernalis is too fanciful to deserve credit. Who knows whether the Furia Infernalis is anything else than a murderous Mrs.
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