The Red Dust

The Red Dust

CHAPTER I

Prey

The sky grew gray and then almost white. The overhanging banks of clouds
seemed to withdraw a little from the steaming earth. Haze that hung
always among the mushroom forests and above the fungus hills grew more
tenuous, and the slow and misty rain that dripped the whole night long
ceased reluctantly.

As far as the eye could see a mad world stretched out, a world of
insensate cruelties and strange, fierce maternal solicitudes. The
insects of the night--the great moths whose wings spread far and wide in
the dimness, and the huge fireflies, four feet in length, whose beacons
made the earth glow in their pale, weird light--the insects of the night
had sought their hiding-places.

Now the creatures of the day ventured forth. A great ant-hill towered a
hundred feet in the air. Upon its gravel and boulder-strewn side a
commotion became visible.