After the shower all came forth at full speed, but for some minutes there was considerable confusion. The sluice of water had evidently washed away much of the scent which stood for guide-posts, directing signs, and pointing hands along the trail. Only after many false starts were the old pathways discovered and again traversed. In one place the ants climbed a huge log and marched along the top for six or seven yards. I timed them carefully and found that on this straightaway track their average speed was two and a half feet in ten seconds. So they covered a mile in three hours and a half, and in all the army ants I have ever watched this rate of speed never slackens; in fact, it frequently greatly increases. When hot on the scent of prey they double their usual gait. There are as many ludicrous sights to be seen in the ranks of army ants as there are among the banner-decked processions of the leaf-cutters. Along the tree-trunk track came three big white-heads straddling an inch-worm--in this case an inch-and-a-half-worm. They leaned forward and downward, the heads of those behind overlapping the abdomens in front, and they looked for all the world like the riders of an old-fashioned three-seated bicycle, spurting along the trail. Another simile, even more vivid, evoked the vision of some weirdly constructed, elongated myriopod with eighteen legs. After a hard fight, in the course of which I was stung twice, I unseated the trio and took the measuring worm away from them. As I lifted it from where it had fallen, at least fifty ants hurled themselves at the spot, jaws snapping, trembling with violent rage. I walked ten feet away and dropped the worm in the midst of another column, and within an equal number of seconds three new white-heads had mounted it and were hustling it along--the replicas in appearance and method of the first team.