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There was an old ant-bear hole hidden in the grass, into which the horse trod, and falling, rolled over on its rider. Lukwazi lay quite still. His neck was broken. "Since then, no horse will ever pass the Ghoda bush between sunset and sunrise when the Moon is new." Next morning I dismounted at the Ghoda, and walked into the forest.
The small ant-bear, and the large one, remarkable for its long, broad bushy tail, are sometimes seen on the tops of the wood-ants’ nests; the armadillos bore in the sand-hills, like rabbits in a warren; and the porcupine is now and then discovered in the trees over your head. This, too, is the native country of the sloth.
Next morning I opened the packet which he had given me, after wondering once or twice whether I should not thrust it down an ant-bear hole as it was. But this, somehow, I could not find the heart to do, though now I wish I had. Inside, cut from the black core of the umzimbiti wood, with just a little of the white sap left on it to mark the eyes, teeth and nails, was a likeness of Mameena.
Once it was completely dark we could not go on. We should lose our way; the horses would get into ant-bear holes and break their legs. Perhaps we might become bogged in some hollow, therefore we must wait till the moon rose, which would not be for a couple of hours. Meanwhile those accursed Basutos would be following us even in the dark.
They belong, indeed, to two very dissimilar orders of insects. The ant-bear, however, never troubles himself about this matter; but, scraping away with his powerful claws, soon breaks open the citadel which the industrious insects have formed during days of unremitting toil. The mounds of the termites differ in composition. Some, consisting of earth, are worked into a substance as hard as stone.
Though its head is elongated, it is considerably less so than that of the ant-bear; while its hair is short and silky, resembling fine wool. The feet are formed in the same manner as those of the larger animal, but, to enable it the better to climb among the branches, it possesses a prehensile tail.
I'm not quite as blind as an ant-bear yet. I saw her blush when you spoke to her just now. I saw her. Well, well, it is a pretty game for a young man, isn't it, nef Frank?" "I'll be bound the Captain here 'burns a long candle' with pretty Bessie every night, eh, Frank? I hope you ain't jealous, nef?
Who could mistake her?" and she pointed to Mameena, who was listening to every word intently, as a dog listens at the mouth of an ant-bear hole when the beast is stirring beneath. "Then what of the woman and her deeds?" asked Panda. "Only this, O King.
It was as if a person or a thing, deep down in the bowels of the earth, hearing the bird, stirred in its sleep, and shouted up, "I come." And it came. Heralded by a peculiar, quaint, little, chatty, sibilant, hissing, whistling chuckle, there emerged from a regular cave that he, or an ant-bear, or some other burrower had constructed under an ancient bush, a beast a most remarkable beast.
Although Leon had never seen the creature before, he had read about it, and had also seen pictures of it. He knew it, therefore, at a glance. That proboscis-looking snout was not to be mistaken. It could belong to no other creature than the tamanoir, or great ant-eater, by the people of South America called the ant-bear.
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