The aroused roaches formed into wide columns and platoons, and began to march hungrily. They were handsome, even elegant, in their way, a burnished mahogany color that blended into the leaves. Their segmented exoskeletons formed the flexible shields that, with their folded wings, gave a jewel-­like appearance in the light, the iridescence that had attracted Reed Brockshaw’s little girl.

These were not the common house cockroaches, which Peter Hubbard would describe as Bratella germanica. Nor were they what he would first suppose—the familiar “water bugs,” called by scientists Periplaneta americana, well-­named as “wanderers.”

The Yarkie Island roaches bellying toward Bo Leslie through the leaves were three, four and five inches long, some almost an inch around. The size was unusual for the climate, though five-­inch roaches—Blabbearus—are seen commonly in the tropics. Peter Hubbard and Wanda Lindstrom would wonder, later, at the mandibular development that had provided Yarkie roaches with mouths much wider than any normal species, together with jaw muscles so powerful and teeth so razored that nothing would be left of a skeleton. The two biologists ascertained that these unusual cockroaches on Yarkie could indeed attack as viciously on land as the legended piranha fish in water. Swarming by the thousands, as now at Bo Leslie, they could consume a prey with lightning speed.

The seeming delicacy of their legs belied the roaches’ strength and speed, except for the bulge of extraordinary muscle where the limbs—hairy in this section—joined the body. Working as a colony, in the way of insects like termites and ants, these roaches managed amazing feats for their size. Their speed, too, was remarkable. Even the ordinary house roach could travel at a rate of three-­four miles an hour. These were even faster—the equivalent speed for a man would be well over two hundred miles per hour.

It was such creatures, incited and electrified by the violence of Bo Leslie’s thumping, that were coming at the man fast. He had tried to prolong his pleasure as long as possible, but now he was done. The roaches raced nearer, spreading into a crescent, to engulf the man before he had time to respond. In his shivering ecstasy, still gasping for breath, the man did not for a moment even feel the unexpected new caress—the feather-­touch of thousands of soughing antennae exploring his hot body. He was hardly aware of the first needle-­like bites that began to taste his skin. It was the searing fire in his eyes that was Bo Leslie’s first consciousness that he was being attacked—assailed in some way he did not understand. But he knew at once, deeply, that he was a goner.