Ant ventures

If Anthony Ant had thought the day before that Dr. Alexander Beetle Bug knew how to write a prescription that was good for something, the same prescription did not seem so joyful when he wakened early next morning. He found that the chip was bobbling horribly and that if he had not used his dressing case for a pillow, and tied his lunch basket to his belt, probably both would have been jubbled into the brook in the night. He sat up in a hurry and discovered that he must have drifted far away from the place he had boarded the chip the night before.

There was nothing on either shore that looked the least like anything he had seen the day before. My, but he was scared!

“Oh, where am I?” he thought. “I must have gone ’way past the bend of the brook and halfway down to the other end of the world! This is awful! I’d better get off right away!”

Oh, but he couldn’t get off right away! The current was too swift, and there was no chance to jump to anything near the boat. He had to hang on as hard as ever was, and sail away whether he wanted to or not. He was hungry too, for he had not tasted anything since the picnic afternoon tea of the day before, but with the bobbling of the boat he could not even open his lunch basket. There was nothing to do but to wait until something happened.

The something which happened did it so quickly that Anthony Ant did not know what it was. All he knew was that he was sore from head to foot from a big bump he got when something dashed the chip against a large stone near the middle of the brook. The boat itself had had its last trip for a long time, as any one could tell by looking at it. It stood on its side against the stone, and a mass of weeds and grass that had floated down after it now wedged it in so it could not get out unless a most out-of-the-way thing should let it out of its prison.

The Ant had his things with him, anyway, and that was something. Maybe his mother had guessed that his journey would not all be easy and that there might be bumps and scratches and bruises, for mothers know all about those things always. So in his dressing case he found salve in a tiny jar, and something to put on bumps, and a small roll of bandages, and even a little bottle of liniment for lameness.

A big lump that nearly made him cry seemed to get into his throat when he thought about Mother Ant so far away in that cosy Ant-Hill Manor. Whenever he was hurt, she had such a cuddly way of taking him into her lap and rocking him in the big rocking-chair, and saying, “Poor little Anthony! Did he hurt himself on the bad stones? There, there, there! Don’t cry now, Mother’s petkins! It will be all well soon. Let Mother kiss it. There, there! See the pretty pictures of all the little Antlets in the nice picture book Mother will show him. Here’s a little Antlet that got hurt just like you. Such a naughty little Antlet that ran away from his dear mother and brothers and sisters once upon a time, and fell down a terrible hill, and bumped both his knees on his frontest legs, and tore his best clothes! Oh, my, my! Look at him, and see how he is crying! And here he is in another picture, trying to get home to dear Mother, and here she is coming after him and picking him up, and here—”

But Anthony Ant had to stop that minute thinking about all that, for it made that lump so big that the tears were all ready to tumble down from the tear places in his eyes. How the whole family would laugh at him if he let cuddly thoughts turn him into a baby and send him back home like a silly coward! He would stick to the doctor’s prescription whatever happened, for even his mother, who never had let him go off alone before, had smiled at the prescription and had helped him get ready to go.

Sometimes something from a lunch basket is the very best thing to keep down a lump in the throat, for often things seem much worse when the stomach is empty. Anthony Ant, therefore, put salve and bandages and liniment on his worst hurts, and then sat down on the flat part of the great stone and opened his lunch basket.

Another lump almost came up into his throat at sight of the pink Japanese napkins and dainty things, for it made him think of those kind friends he might never see again. But he took a sandwich right away. The minute he had swallowed a mouthful both the lumps had gone, and by the time he had eaten the things suitable for a whole breakfast he was as cheerful as any Ant could have been far away from home. He found that the lunch basket had been wiped clean from any grit, and the jar that had held the honey his mother had put in was washed clean and filled with a rich cheese made from goodness-knows-what, for it was a secret dainty of the Wild-Rose Tea House and was not given away to everyone.

After breakfast Anthony felt better. He even whistled a little tune, called “All on a Sunny Morning.” He made up his mind to several sensible things. One was that he would not travel too hard and fast that day. Another was that he would try to find something to eat before his lunch basket was empty. Another was that he would not let anything make him forget to keep both his lunch basket and his dressing case with him where they would be safe. The last thing was that he would make the Ladybug and the small Spider, Size Two proud they had met him, by really always being as polite as he had seemed to them to be, for well he knew that he was not always so kind and mannerly.

The next thing was to cross to the right bank of the brook, and this was not easy. The water was swift and deep, and he must wait for something to float down.

Many odd bits of floating things passed him, but at last came a round bit of branch broken from some tree, and it stuck in the narrow channel between the big stone and the next one. It was so unsteady, though, that Anthony Ant strapped both his lunch basket and his dressing case to his belt before crossing the wobbly bridge, and he nearly fell off three times before the trip across was made. There was a shallow place beyond this next stone, and he found he could get around it and over the shallowest parts of it on stones and gravel that partly choked the brook there. One more deep place stood between him and the bank, and then a willow branch bobbed in the breeze and brushed the stone upon which he stood. The next time it bobbed down he took firm hold of it and pulled himself up. The remainder of the journey was easy, for there is nothing easier for a smooth pathway for Ants than willow branches, and on this fine floorway Anthony Ant climbed into the tree and down its trunk to the ground.

Another cheerful thing happened then, for he spied a bush near the willow tree. On the bush a number of large black Ants were trying to take home a large Bug they had killed. Maybe you never heard of it, but there is a law among Ants that any Bug, whoever kills it, belongs to as many Ants as can get any of it. So Anthony Ant felt he had as much right to some of the Bug as they had, and he boldly marched up to get a piece.

It was such a good Bug that none of the black Ants wanted to lose a morsel of it, and they boxed Anthony Ant’s ears and bit at him and said things to him that no polite Ant would say whether he were a black Ant or a red one. But Anthony was brave and spry in spite of his bruises, and he skipped in between the Ants and dodged their cuffings so well that he managed to pull off a large piece of Bug—enough for several meals. Without waiting to hear any of their rude remarks, he ran with it down the bush and hid behind a rock, where he rested and took the time to break the Bug into pieces of a size to fit into his basket. It gave him a comfortable feeling to know that his lunch basket once more was as heavy as it had been when he first left home.

There was no woods on this side of the brook in this spot, but an open field of short grass. It would be a good change from dark thick trees, he thought, and much more cheerful, and after lunch he started off toward the right, and left the brook behind him. He might meet adventures in the middle of the field, he thought.

Long before he reached the middle of the field, however, an Ant Venture happened, for as he pressed forward through a dense part of the grass he came suddenly upon a large hole—a vast cave it seemed to him—and over the cave was a sign which said:

Molesworth Deep Mining Company,
Limited