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Updated: June 15, 2025
At dawn, when the first rays of the sun lit up the Biggersbergen in all their grotesque beauty, I realised for the first time where I was, and found that I was considerably more than 12 miles from Elandslaagte, the fateful scene of yesterday. Tired out, half-starved and as disconsolate as the donkey in the stable, I sat myself on an anthill.
I fancied the city a giant anthill, and searched with my glass as if I expected to see the ants swarming out. But no sign of life was visible upon the monotonous surface of the sand-blanketed roof, and high above the range of naked vision hung the hawk-like watchers of the World Patrol. The lure of unravelled secrets, the ambition for discovery and exploration stirred my boyish veins.
This was not much, but it was sufficient to prove his great strength, and to convince me that a large tortoise could easily have walked off with a little boy. I found Bonny dismounted and waiting. "No steenboks to-day, I fear," he said. "We must have a shot at something, Bonny," said I, dismounting, and sitting down on an anthill.
Now that he is in the country, he goes on: I have been seeing real splendors, such as fine, sound fruit and gilded insects; I have been quite turning philosopher, and if I happen to tread upon an anthill, I say, like that immortal Bonaparte, "These creatures are men: what is it to Saturn, or Venus, or the North Star?" And then my philosopher comes down to scribble "items" for a newspaper.
Even if you did not already know from the title of the lecture what city this is that I am describing, you would no doubt guess that it is a beehive. For where in the whole world, except indeed upon an anthill, can we find so busy, so industrious, or so orderly a community as among the bees?
If it lay in the power of an ant to study the laws of the stars; and if, intent on this study, though fully aware that these laws are immutable, never to be modified, it declined to concern itself further with the affairs or the future of the anthill should we, who stand to the insect as the great gods are supposed to stand to ourselves, who judge it and dominate it, as we believe ourselves to be dominated and judged; should we approve this ant, or, for all its universality, regard it as either good or moral?
And he was turned into an anthill covered over with creepers. And after the lapse of a long period, swarms of ants enveloped him. And covered all over with ants, the sagacious saint looked exactly like a heap of earth. And he went on practising austerities, enveloped on all sides with that ant-hill.
Then Abhimanyu, excessively pierced by those great bowmen with their straight shafts, shot shafts at Karna which was capable of piercing through every armour and body. That shaft, piercing through Karna's coat of mail and then his body, entered the earth like a snake piercing through an anthill. Deeply pierced, Karna felt great pain and became perfectly helpless.
Some of the men in tatters carried, slung over their shoulders, black sacks and game-bags; others huge cudgels in their hands; one burly negro, his face tattooed with deep stripes, doubtless a slave in former days, leaned against the wall in dignified indifference, clothed in rags; barefoot urchins and mangy dogs scampered about amongst the men and women; the swarming, agitated, palpitating throng of beggars seethed like an anthill.
As he went, it seemed to him that he had grown middle-aged within the hour; his youth had departed as mysteriously as his strength. A little later, Tucker, who was sitting on the end of a big log at the woodpile, looked up in surprise from the anthill he was watching. "Quit work early, eh, Christopher?"
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