“As we lay there, half dead with sick terror, I noticed that no more were on me, the masses had withdrawn, and one of the larger insects stood very close to my face, on each ebony mandible a drop of venom glistening. Perhaps it was our first visitor, but they all looked alike to me.

“I jumped up. The Indians lay on a red noisome carpet of crushed bodies, and we were all covered with a pulpy mess. One by one they stood up, and we discovered that not one of us had been bitten. Then the hordes opened invitingly again a westward path, and we walked down it as prisoners. The prisoners of insects!

“But one stayed behind. He was the man who had destroyed the large spider. Apparently at a signal, the mass closed in about him, cutting him off from the rest of us. He tried to run to us, as they forced us down the trail, but in an instant he was a staggering, bellowing heap of vermin, that tottered a few steps and went down. Before we were out of sight, his howls had become moans, and we knew what the end would be.

“So, with one of the great, yellow-headed brutes in the lead, one at each side of us, and two bringing up the rear, we came again to the fatal tambo number 10 and passed westward, following the brook, the swarms surrounding us on all sides, as thickly packed as leaves.”

-3-

The Spider King

“About a mile farther on, the brook emptied into a small river. This we followed down the right-hand bank, till the middle of the afternoon, when, we struck a well-defined path, hard beaten by much travel.

“The throng of gray spiders now began to disappear, having reached their farthest boundary, the five black and silver guards still remaining, and many of the red and sable fellows. But when a short time later, the path was barred by an immense crowd of frightful monsters, similar to those that guarded us, the small spiders also returned to their own zone.

“Just as dusk was falling, we marched out of the jungle into the open, and, surrounded by hundreds of silver-barred brutes, were forced down an incline into a valley. It was bare of vegetation, and in the center stood several stone buildings clustered about a larger and more pretentious edifice. These were windowless and doorless, being entered through a trap in the flat roof. They made me think of the nests of trapdoor spiders.