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Bermuda is the most northern coral-atoll existing, and is the only place where I have actually seen the coral insect at work on the reefs. He is not an insect at all, but a sort of black slug. These curious creatures have all an inherited tendency to suicide, for when the coral-worm gets above the tide-level he dies.
It looked like some terrible eruption breaking out on the smooth skin of the hill. His slow progress was like that of a slug, befouling beauty with a monstrous trail. Though the dipping gold-trace increased the man's work, he found consolation in the increasing richness of the pans.
Jim and Dennis struggled to turn their heads all of them they could move to see what the cessation of jaw-clashing might mean. Three worker termites squeezed past. They approached one of the line of paralyzed insect hulks, and sank their mandibles into a garden slug. They tugged at this until they had it under the live cistern of red liquid into which the spear had been thrust.
"Butter! thou nasty man!" "Why for how dost thou mean, my lady?" quoth I. "Why, for mashing that poor beast to a pap." And then a-holding of her hand level below her eyes, so that she might not discern the ground, "Is he dead?" quoth she. "Dead?" asked I, for I was somewhat puzzled in my mind. "Ay, the slug; is he dead?"
"Nonsense!" he protested. "I made a botch of the whole thing. I ought " "No," denied Milo. "It was I who made a botch of it. I owe you not only my life but an apology. It was my blow, not the other man's, that knocked you out. I misunderstood, and " "That's all right!" declared Gavin. "In the dim light it's a miracle we didn't all of us slug the wrong men. He stopped.
"It seems so," I answered, "unless you prefer to be stamped flat outside or eaten," I added, pointing to a great crocodile that had also emerged from the channel and was coming along towards us with open jaws. "By the Axe!" shouted Umslopogaas again, "I a warrior will not die thus, trodden on like a slug by an ox." Now I have mentioned a tree which I climbed.
There was a loud slamming of doors, and presently there was a roar of feet upon the boards of the stairway. Voices rang out sharply. "What is it?" "What's th' matter?" "He's killin' her!" "Slug 'im with anythin' yeh kin lay hold of, Jack!" But over all this came the shrill, shrewish tones of a woman.
They looked into all the rooms; they were cold, bare, and empty. They descended into the passage, and thence into the cellars below. The green damp hung upon the low walls; the tracks of the snail and slug glistened in the light of the candle; but all was still as death. 'What do you think now? said the Jew, when they had regained the passage.
"I was standing by looking at a large-sized fracas one day and me doing nothing just as peaceful as an old plough-hoss when a gent ups and drills me in the leg. His bullet had to cut through my holster and then it jammed into my thigh bone. Put me in bed for a couple of months and when I got out I had the slug fixed up for a fob. Just so's I could remember the man that shot me.
Slug, who sleeps in the other top one, is unable to get out of his, and is to have his supper handed up by a boy.
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