"I hope these insect fiends are cannibalistic also in their habits, and that the whole tribe have gone on this locust expedition. It is something decidedly unpleasant to think that we may have to encounter them on our return." Nothing that they had experienced in the forest had been at all equal to the horror of those half-inch adversaries. As they passed those numerous and ghastly tokens of this most terrible foe, Ned and his chums mentally vowed that it would be better to push ahead, rather than retreat down that way too quickly again. No animal that lived seemed too formidable to be able to resist them. Before night came upon them and forced them to stop, they passed a group of skeletons terribly suggestive. They were those of a lion, a lioness, and two cubs. They had evidently been overtaken while sleeping in a little cavity, and devoured before they could move far away from each other. They lay in a circle, with the gravel torn up round them, in their impotent and maddening agony. The skeleton of the lion was on his back, completely curled up, with his thigh bone in his mouth. The lioness was sprawling with legs far apart, and the cubs in different positions, each indicative of torture. That night they had to do without any fire, as there was no fuel to be found. Scarcely one of them slept, so unnerved had these sights made them. However, the darkness passed without any disturbance. Indeed, the silence of that long night was weird, for it seemed the silence of a universal death. Nothing broke it. No sigh of wind, no chirp of insect, not even the rustle of a night adder--only a deep and awful stillness that kept them awake with horrified expectancy. Morning at last arrived, and they went on following the stream and the whitened trail of those demon ants. The gorge was gradually becoming narrower, yet without any diminishing of those stupendous sides. It was not more than half the width it had been, and as they looked up, the sky appeared like a ribbon of blue very far above their heads. They were closed in now with rocks on all sides, as the chasm was getting more abrupt in its windings. All at once they came to the head of the stream, while beyond them appeared only a dry and stony bed. At this sight the hearts of all sank and felt like lumps of lead. The stream rose and bubbled out of a little fountain, while round it spread a patch of bright green grass. It was a delicious little patch of moisture and verdure in the midst of this surrounding vastness of shadow and sterility. As they flung down their burdens and rested beside them, they felt as if bidding farewell to their only friend. It had been a good and trusty friend to them for many days, becoming more dearly prized the frailer it grew. It had saved their lives even at its last stretch, and now it was all they had to depend upon in the most uncertain future.