Just then Myles espied a branch or root protruding from the bank just above the level of his head. With one last spurt, he leaped in the air and grasped the branch. For a moment he hung swaying beneath it. It held, and did not become dislodged from the bank. So gradually he hauled himself up, until finally he sat upon it. The top of the bank was still too far away to reach, so for the present Myles just clung to his perch and panted. Great agonized sobs shook his frame. But at last he regained his breath, and then coughed and spat for a while until his aching lungs felt somewhat better. Meanwhile the ant-bear, if such it was, slowly emerged from its place of burial. The beast was about thirty-five feet in length and resembled a huge beetle, except that its six legs were all nearer to the head than in a beetle, thus giving it more the effect of a gigantic louse. With its ten-foot-long razor-sharp mandibles clicking hungrily, it slowly approached its prisoner, who watched it fascinated. A slight noise across the pit-mouth momentarily diverted Cabot’s attention, and looking up he saw a Formian standing at the edge with a rifle in its two front paws. Evidently this new enemy had seen him from the road and had come over to enjoy the spectacle of the final destruction of the arch-nemesis of its race. And if by any chance Myles should escape from the enemy below, the enemy above stood ready to polish him off with a rifle-shot. A pleasant situation indeed! Meanwhile the ant bear continued its slow but steady approach. And Cabot’s revolver lay useless beside his drying toga at the edge of the plain. V ANT-BEAR AND ANT-MAN It is characteristic of Myles Cabot that, in desperate situations such as the one in which he now found himself, he always either becomes engrossed in some personally-detached scientific speculation as to his own fate, or else his thoughts become filled with some absurd doggerel ditty or jingle. In the present instance, as he clung naked to his perch on the side of the pit, with the ant bear approaching him from below and the ant man covering him with a rifle from above, all that he could think of was that old Harvard Glee Club song about the darky, which ends with the words: “O Lord, if you can’t help me, For Heaven’s sake don’t help that bear!” As the ten-foot jaws of the huge carnivorous beast came closer and closer to Cabot, the ant man on the bank could no longer restrain his glee, and began dancing up and down with joy. Cabot watched his antics with disgust, and even shouted across at him: “Shut up, you d—— Eli! Do you think that that is a sportsmanlike way to act on the bleachers?” But, of course, the ant didn’t hear, as Cabot was without his headset and artificial antennae.