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Updated: July 28, 2025
He was not in his right mind. The poison swelled him... U'm." They came to a long silence. "We will sink that canoe burn it." "And then?" The inquiry irritated Gerilleau. His shoulders went up, his hands flew out at right angles from his body. "What is one to do?" he said, his voice going up to an angry squeak. "Anyhow," he broke out vindictively, "every ant in dat cuberta! I will burn dem alive!"
The head of Lieutenant da Cunha appeared over the side of the cuberta, and a brief colloquy ensued. "You must go aboard," said Gerilleau. The lieutenant objected that the boat was full of ants. "You have your boots," said Gerilleau. The lieutenant changed the subject. "How did these en die?" he asked.
Steam was got up, and in the afternoon the monitor went on up the river with an air of going to ask somebody something, and by sunset came back again and anchored. A thunderstorm gathered and broke furiously, and then the night became beautifully cool and quiet and everyone slept on deck. Except Gerilleau, who tossed about and muttered. In the dawn he awakened Holroyd.
"Poisoned by the ants?" "Who knows?" Gerilleau shrugged his shoulders. "Perhaps they bit him badly... When I joined dis service I joined to fight men. Dese things, dese ants, dey come and go. It is no business for men."
Captain Gerilleau, who was Holroyd's sole distraction from these physical distresses, developed into a formidable bore, telling the simple story of his heart's affections day by day, a string of anonymous women, as if he was telling beads.
No! Dey get in corners and watch what you do." "And they sting?" asked Holroyd. "Yes. Dey sting. Dere is poison in the sting." He meditated. "I do not see what men can do against ants. Dey come and go." "But these don't go." "They will," said Gerilleau.
When Captain Gerilleau received instructions to take his new gunboat, the Benjamin Constant, to Badama on the Batemo arm of the Guaramadema and there assist the inhabitants against a plague of ants, he suspected the authorities of mockery.
He perceived the ants were becoming interesting, and the nearer he drew to them the more interesting they became. Gerilleau abandoned his old themes almost suddenly, and the Portuguese lieutenant became a conversational figure; he knew something about the leaf-cutting ant, and expanded his knowledge. Gerilleau sometimes rendered what he had to tell to Holroyd.
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