“Whether they be termites or not, Mr. Benedict,” replied Dick Sand, “we must dislodge them and take their place.”

“They will devour us.  They will be defending their rights.”

“Forward!  Forward!”

“But, wait now!” said Cousin Benedict again.  “I thought those ant-hills only existed in Africa.”

“Forward!” exclaimed Dick Sand, for the last time, with a sort of violence.  He was so much afraid that Mrs. Weldon might hear the last word pronounced by the entomologist.

They followed Dick Sand with all haste.  A furious wind had sprung up.  Large drops crackled on the ground.  In a few moments the squalls of wind would become unbearable.  Soon one of those cones which stood on the plain was reached.  No matter how threatening the termites might be, the human beings must not hesitate.  If they could not drive the insects away, they must share their abode.

At the bottom of this cone, made with a kind of reddish clay, there was a very narrow hole.  Hercules enlarged it with his cutlass in a few moments, so as to give a passage even to a man like himself.

To Cousin Benedict’s extreme surprise, not one of the thousands of termites that ought to occupy the ant-hill showed itself.  Was, then, the cone abandoned?

The hole enlarged, Dick and his companions glided into it.  Hercules disappeared the last, just as the rain fell with such rage that it seemed to extinguish the lightnings.

But those wind squalls were no longer to be feared.  A happy chance had furnished this little troop with a solid shelter, better than a tent, better than a native’s hut.

It was one of those termite cones that, according to Lieutenant Cameron’s comparison, are more astonishing than the pyramids of Egypt, raised by the hands of men, because they have been built by such small insects.

“It is,” said he, “as if a nation had built Mount Everest, the highest mountain of the Himalaya chain.”

CHAPTER V.

ANTS AND THEIR DWELLING.

At this moment the storm burst with a violence unknown in temperate latitudes.

It was providential that Dick Sand and his companions had found this refuge!

In fact, the rain did not fall in distinct drops, but in streams of various thickness.  Sometimes it was a compact mass forming a sheet of water, like a cataract, a Niagara.  Imagine an aerial basin, containing a whole sea, being upset.  Under such showers the ground was hollowed out, the plains were changed to lakes, the streams to torrents, the rivers, overflowing, inundated vast territories.  In temperate zones the violence of the storms decreases according to their duration; but in Africa, however heavy they are, they continue for several entire days.  How can so much electricity be collected in the clouds?  How can such quantities of vapor be accumulated?  It is very difficult to comprehend this.  However, such are the facts, and one might suppose himself transported to the extraordinary epochs of the diluvian period.