Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/406

 dozen branches floating gayly downstream covered. three deep by clusters of struggling and stinging bees.

I rose to my feet, waded to the bank, and for a good quarter of an hour sat there panting and hawking and fighting to regain my breath. Then we fell to counting our losses and to estimating the damage done. One of my men, a Sumatran Malay named Dolman, was in a fainting condition. He had been stung in nearly two hundred places; his face was reduced to a shapeless mass in which no feature was any longer distinguishable; and he vomited so violently that I feared for his life. We put him into a boat and the neighbouring villagers of Dolut undertook to send him back to my hut at Penjum. Then the rest of us limped across grazing grounds to the village and lay down upon the clean mats spread for us on the veranda of the headman's house, where we endured the fever that was burning in our blood. Our hands were like great boxing gloves, our heads and faces were swollen, and puffy, and we had to abandon all idea of proceeding far- ther upon our journey that day.

We were profoundly sorry for ourselves, and we were less relieved than disgusted when one of our number, who had been missing and whom we had reckoned as dead, came in half an hour later per- fectly unharmed. He had seen the bees coming, he told us, and had squatted down and remained quite still to await their assault. They had covered him from head to foot; but as a bee is aware that using his sting usually results in his own death,