Atta (1953) by Francis Rufus Bellamy

by Atta (pdf)

and as a protection against darts or poison it would serve

  admirably. It was strong but bendable, and tough enough

  to resist the scythe-like jaw of any Formican. Could I

  not fold it up and take it with me ?

  With a flush of excitement mounting in my cheeks I

  laid hold of the sheet and half pulled, half dragged it out

  level on the ground away from the rock. In the center,

  I saw, it was badly ridged in large vertical lines and

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  circles, and rain and dust had settled here, showing that

  it had been in this same position for a long time. But it

  was no moment to speculate on how or when, or who.

  its mysterious owner might be; it was here before me,

  and that was enough.

  With an even greater excitement I strode boldly across

  the shining sheet itself and looked down to see how badly damaged the vertical ridges were and if too crushed for my purposes. All of it seemed to be extremely uneven, almost as if it had been made like some old farm rag rug. I should have to press it out with a heavy rock,

  I saw, perhaps with Atta’s help.

  Not all the ridges were from folding, however, I saw

  presently. Some of them, to my amazement, seemed to

  form a definite kind of large hieroglyphic, done in characters so large that they were difficult to decipher, but remarkably like Roman letters, raised in low relief from

  the background of silver. I could not make out for a

  while the one nearest to me. Then of a sudden it stood

  out plainly. It was a large letter C.

  Without waiting I took another step and deciphered

  the second letter just beyond it. It was clearly an H and

  easily seen. With rapid, fascinated steps I followed the

  other ridges or letters, and as I did so I added in my

  mind each one to the preceding. They were nine in all,

  and for a moment I stood like a contestant in a childish

  game, repeating them: C—H —O—C—O—L —A—T—E.

  I gripped the handle of my ax in a kind of pounding

  amazed disbelief as I uttered aloud the word they

  formed.

  “Chocolate! Chocolate!”

  Why, the hieroglyphic was no hieroglyphic at all! It

  was the simple word “chocolate,” done on a grand scale

  on something like coarse silver foil.

  With the discovery I drew the back of my hand across

  my suddenly wet forehead and closed my eyes to ease

  the strain of the suddenly aching eyeballs. Chocolate on

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  silver foil; just the huge word chocolate written in letters

  four feet high on shining tinfoil!

  For an instant I wondered if I were about to go completely mad. Then I opened my eyes, strode violently to the edge of the shining sheet, and kicked up the edge so

  that the underneath side was visible. Yes, it was bright

  gold, just like the piece of tinfoil that a giant might unwrap from a choice piece of chocolate and toss away into the grass of a garden.

  “Chocolate”—on tinfoil! Written on a gargantuan candy

  wrapper precisely like the one I myself had tossed away

  so carelessly into the grass of my own sunken garden

  so long ago and far away!

  At the incredible suggestion I burst into a mad, wild

  shout of ironical laughter and thrust from my consciousness the whole insane conception. Why, if this were actually tinfoil from candy, what was I? A madman in a hideous dream? A patient in some hospital for

  the mentally deranged, imagining an impossible nightmare, an illusion painted by a sick brain on the hospital wall? If this were tinfoil of natural size, I myself could

  certainly be nothing more than a pygmy, fighting for my

  life in the grass. I was not a man, lost in some foreign

  land. Like Atta I was a mere insect, carrying a lance that

  could be a broken needle, finding rope that was mere

  thread, taking refuge in what could only be a thimble-

  living in a tiny English walnut shell and stumbling about

  in the coarse fieldgrass of my own farm; a pygmy struggling against other pygmies. Atta was not my real friend, my companion, my rescuer—he was a mere ant. And I

  myself— A bitter joke, the size of my own fingernail!

  At the frightful picture I clenched my teeth and with

  a final effort at self-preservation shut the whole dreadful

  nightmare from my staring eyes. Instead, with sweating

  hands, I dragged and trampled clumsily the great sheet

  of tinfoil into one mighty bundle. I tied it up into transportable shape; I staggered with it to Trotta and laid it across her in front of my saddle. And then with a

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  hoarse cry to her I swung myself into the saddle and

  kicked her brutally in the ribs.

  How I ever covered the dozen miles to our stronghold

  I do not know. It still seems to me a miracle that Trotta

  should have made her way through the trackless jungle,

  burdened down with both my heavy bundle and myself

  and without any directions from me. For I sat almost

  senseless on her back.

  It is with shame that I confess what happened next.

  For I was not senseless when I arrived at our stronghold.

  I was fully aware of our huge poplar-like thistle fence, of

  the familiar ridges in our walnut house, of the small

  Fabrans gazing in the paddock. I had had time, too, to

  remember the uncanny familiarity of the great valley,

  with its distant uplands and the monstrous cup-like trees

  on the heights beyond. I had even struggled to shut from

  my memory the picture of the South African veldt with

  its bending dandelion trees. But it had all been in vain.

  At each added fact and proof faintness had assailed me,

  and sweat stood out on my hands, and I was close to being a madman when Trotta stopped before our paddock gate and I stared dully at its bars.

  Then Atta came out of the house to unbar the gate.

  His pale, gentle eyes stared at me appraisingly when I

  did not move. He approached and laid a feeler on me.

  And at the touch and the unmistakable final evidence

  something went berserk within me. Like a maniac I turned

  on him, and I know now that nothing can excuse the madness, the fury, the bestial insanity with which I fell upon him and with vile curses sought to tear him limb from

  limb, blaspheming the Providence that had brought me

  to such a pass, grinding my teeth in a kind of murderous

  frenzy that wished nothing so much as death—release

  from this monstrous position in which I lived and struggled on an equality with the very insects of the fields.

  It was as if the mere touch of Atta had confirmed the

  reality of the nightmare from which I strove to awake;

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  as if in a frenzy of despair and horror I sought to end

  my life and his.

  I cannot give sufficient thanks to whatever God of

  mercy there may be who gave Atta to understand in that

  supreme moment that I, the maniac who struggled so

  violently to take his life, was not his sane friend and

  companion of a few hours before, but a wretched sick

  man possessed by some devil of destruction. How long it

  took him to subdue me enough to bind me securely in

  the upper chamber, I do not know. I can but dimly remember how, in the con
fused blur of that awful struggle, he forced me down, down upon the hard ground outside

  the paddock until my strength suddenly gave way and

  I fell and lost consciousness completely.

  When I awoke in the darkness of the upper chamber,

  it was to the confused sounds of a new struggle going on

  outside; and undoubtedly it was this that saved my reason. At first I confused this struggle with the one through which I had just come. But in a moment it resolved itself

  into what it was: the clash of armor against armor, the

  hoarse shouts of hostile Formicans outside in the garden,

  and the peculiar battle cry that only Atta could raise

  when he defended himself from enemies.

  The mere sound was enough to drive from me all

  consideration of my terrible new position and the hopelessness of my ever regaining all that had been taken from me. Nothing mattered in that clash of sounds except to join the conflict going on so fiercely just below our stronghold door. For evidently the enemy had come

  upon us before Atta had had opportunity to close the

  door, and he was now sore beset out in the open.

  “Hold ’em, Atta!” I shouted almost instinctively. “I’m

  coming!”

  Alas, I could only sink back with a groan on realizing

  that I was securely fastened to the floor in some manner

  that the dimness prevented me from seeing. With a desperate effort I strove at my bonds, only to fall back again in despair.

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  “Curse my insanity,” I muttered to myself. ‘I've destroyed us!”

  For a moment I was indeed convinced that I had

  ended our lives for good and the conviction must have

  given me superhuman strength. For I made one more

  mighty effort, broke some of the black strands that held

  me, and in a heartbreaking second was free to rise and

  stagger to the doorway, below which Atta stood beating

  back with deadly precision a host of Formicans in brilliant ruddy armor; a host that far outnumbered and outclassed any I had ever seen for the fierceness of their cut-and-thrust and general attack. With a shout of encouragement I snatched up an ax that lay in the corner and leaned out the doorway.

  I was just in time. A big ruddy Formican was pressing

  along the side of the house, seeking to take Atta in the

  rear as he stood below our doorway, and I could just

  reach him. Holding fast to the side of the doorway, I

  swung my ax as far back as I could and let it descend

  with a crash upon his skull.

  “The door!” I shouted to Atta above the din. “We must

  close the door against them!”

  Beyond a nod my comrade gave no sign that he had

  heard me or that he realized that I was recovered from

  my fit of madness and able to stand shoulder to shoulder

  with him again. It was no time for proffering excuses for

  past actions. I took a quick look at the outside country

  through the open doorway, and my heart sank. As far as

  I could see in the twilight marched a host of mangificent

  warriors such as were pressing us hard around our narrow doorway. Atta himself was visibly fighting the fight of despair, and it was clearly but a question of time before it would all be over.

  “Ill spell you!” I shouted to him. “The minute I jump

  down, grab the door-handles and swing the door!”

  Without a second’s hesitation I leaped from the lintel

  straight upon Atta’s nearest adversary, driving my dagger

  deep into his neck, while Atta turned and pulled himself

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  up to the doorway, leaning far out to grasp the doorhandles and pull down the swinging doors. For a moment I thought he had succeeded and we were saved. But, by

  what accident of fate I know not, the door stuck fast, and

  in that second two other Formicans appeared, one on

  each side of the house. The first, on my right, I killed with

  one blow of my ax; but behind me the other must have

  grasped Atta by the leg, for even as I turned back to

  face a new knot of soldiers who were crowding upon me

  I was aware of a struggle behind me. And then Atta came

  crashing down from the lintel, a red-armored soldier beneath him, and two more Formicans leaped upon him.

  With a cry of rage I whirled my ax and leaped for the

  spot myself. I had little hope, of course, of snatching victory out of disaster. But not for nothing had my loyal companion saved my reason and my life. Insect or

  Martian, I would show him that men have a spark of

  loyalty and nobility left in them, despite the exhibition

  I had given an hour since. “I’ll get them!” I shouted to

  his pinned-down form.

  But ,even as I shouted I knew that we were at the

  end of our resources. Both of us were trapped outside in

  the open, and nothing could save us now from that host

  of trained warriors. All that we could hope for was to

  die fighting and achieve death with honor.

  For a giddy moment I did stagger his assailants. I

  killed one while he threw off a second. But a mass of warriors was crowding in upon us now, and before I could despatch the third a smashing blow from behind knocked

  me in a dizzy heap, and the fight closed over me, and

  I knew no more.

  Chapter 7

  I t w a s some time before I came fully to myself. I had

  been conscious of being lifted from the ground and of

  being carried swiftly along for an indefinite period. But

  the blow on my head had deprived me of all acuteness

  of perception or feeling, and for many minutes I found

  difficulty in separating everything that had actually occurred from a conviction that I was a child again, ill of brain fever in the hospital, and once more imagining that

  I was going through the Egyptian war.

  Presently, however, the continuous joggling motion

  with which my captors carried me broke through to my

  consciousness, and I opened my eyes to find that I was

  being carried along a narrow path by a large black Form-

  ican, one of a long column that must have numbered

  many hundreds. I could see them winding in and out

  through the trees far ahead of me.

  What astonished me beyond measure was to observe

  that every sixth or seventh black warrior in this host balanced on his head, like an Asiatic water-carrier, one of the red warriors who had attacked our house, and that

  these latter, though much in the minority, seemed to be

  directing the line of march and issuing orders that were

  immediately obeyed by their black servants.

  My speculations as to the meaning of this oddity were

  soon cut short by a glimpse of Atta himself, who was

  being borne along in the same manner as I, though some

  distance behind me. This sight affected me powerfully

  and went far to clear my brain of any last trace of my re-

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  cent revulsion. I could not contemplate his distant inert

  form without an extraordinary feeling of remose; and the

  proof thus afforded that our friendship was real had a peculiarly strong overtone that reassured me instantly on the dubious questions of my own sanity, I immediately

  addressed my captor in a low tone. And at the next halt I

  succeeded, without attracting the attention of any of the

  master warriors, in persua
ding him to fall back until I

  was within speaking distance of my friend.

  As soon as Atta saw me he grinned slightly and listened

  as before to my voice with gravity, without a hint that

  anything untoward had ever interrupted our relationship.

  But he warned me very quickly that in no circumstances

  should we continue talking together, and that for the

  present all thought of escape was out of the question.

  Our very lives depended on absolute obedience to the

  wills of those who were now our masters.

  They were, he told me, a very fierce and savage tribe,

  whom he had heard of in his childhood as living somewhere far to the south of his home. They were dreaded for the swiftness and implacability with which they carried out their forays, descending unexpectedly upon some peaceful and distant village, slaying all who resisted, and

  carrying off the young to be reared as slaves. My yellow

  hair and beard, he thought, odd as it may seem, had been

  the means of saving my life; for this particular tribe, he

  told me, even more than other Formicans, had a special

  fondness for that color and even kept certain small animals as pets because they had tufts of coarse yellow hair on their heads. This I found to be true, and I afterwards

  saw many of these animals being fondled and petted by

  the ferocious warriors. The black Formicans were all

  slaves, Atta said, and we were evidently being carried

  off to be slaves, too. Meanwhile caution, the utmost

  caution, was our only defense.

  “But surely,” I protested in a whisper, “you don’t mean

  that because we have been taken prisoner we must give

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  up all hope of escape? Surely you can’t be content to be

  a slave now?”

  There was no other way, he replied ruefully. Soon the

  Great Cold—it was thus that he always spoke of winter—

  would be upon us, and, once that had arrived, no one

  could travel. In the meantime we should have to make

  the best of our situation, perhaps until spring.

  This extraordinary resignation in one who had always

  shown exceptional daring in the most trying circumstances astonished me. Guilty as I was of our mishap, I found such an attitude very hard to accept, and I argued