"The spider spreads her web, whether she be
In poet's towers, cellar or barn or tree."
Shelley.
The spider, however, is the great enemy of the small genus of
cockroaches. These spiders are queer little fellows. They do not build
a web for a fly-trap, but merely for a house. For the capture of their
prey, they have a much more ingenious method than any I have ever seen,
a process which displays a marvellous degree of ingenuity and cleverness
on the part of the spider, and proves that they are not unacquainted
with some of the laws of mechanics. Having determined to treat himself
to fresh meat, the wary little thing (I forgot to say that the creature,
although very small in proportion to the generality of tropical spiders,
is rather bigger than our domestic spider, and much stronger) emerges
from his house, in a corner of the cabin roof, and, having attached one
end of a thread to a beam in the roof, about six inches from the
bulkhead, he crawls more than half-way down the bulkhead, and attaching
the thread here again, goes a little further down, and waits.
By-and-by, some unwary 'roach crawls along, between the second
attachment of the thread and the spider; instantly the latter rushes
from his station, describes half a circle round his victim, lets go the
second attachment of the thread--which has now become entangled about
the legs of the 'roach--and, by some peculiar movement, which I do not
profess to understand, the cockroach is swung off the bulkhead, and
hangs suspended by the feet in mid-air; and very foolish he looks; so at
least must think the spider, as he coolly stands on the bulkhead quietly
watching the unavailing struggles of the animal which he has so nimbly
done for; for Marwood himself could not have done the thing half so
neatly. The spider now regains the beam to which the thread is
attached, and, sailor-like, slides down the little rope, and approaches
his victim; and first, as its kicking might interfere with the further
domestic arrangements of its body, the 'roach is killed, by having a
hole eaten out of its head between the eyes. This being accomplished,
the next thing is to bring home the butcher-meat; and the manner in
which this difficult task is performed is nothing less than wonderful.
A thread is attached to the lower part of the body of the 'roach; the
spider then "shins" up its rope with this thread, and attaches it so
high that the body is turned upside down; it then hauls on the other
thread, _turns_ the body once more, and again attaches the thread; and
this process is repeated till the dead cockroach is by degrees hoisted
up to the beam, and deposited in a corner near the door of its domicile.
But the wisdom of the spider is still further shown in what is done
next. It knows very well--so, at least, it would appear--that its
supply of food will soon decay; and being unacquainted with the
properties of salt, it proceeds to enclose the body of the 'roach in a
glutinous substance of the form of a chrysalis or air-tight case. It
is, in fact, hermetically sealed, and in this way serves the spider as
food for more than a week. There is at one end a little hole, which is,
no doubt, closed up after every meal.
In my cabin, besides the common earwigs, which were not numerous, and
were seldom seen, I found there were a goodly number of scorpions, none
of which, however, were longer than two inches. I am not aware that
they did me any particular damage, further than inspiring me with horror
and disgust. It _was_ very unpleasant to put down your hand for a book,
and to find a scorpion beneath your fingers--a hard, scaly scorpion--and
then to hear him crack below your boot, and to be sensible of the horrid
odour emitted from the body: these things were _not_ pleasant. Those
scorpions which live in ships are of a brown colour, and not dangerous;
it is the large green scorpion, so common in the islands of East Africa,
which you must be cautious in handling, for children, it is said,
frequently die from the effects of this scorpion's sting. But a much
more loathsome and a really dangerous creature is the large green
centipede of the tropics. Of these things, the natives themselves have
more horror than of any serpent whatever, not excepting the common
cobra, and many a tale they have to tell you of people who have been
bitten, and have soon after gone raving mad, and so died. They are from
six to twelve inches in length, and just below the neck are armed with a
powerful pair of sharp claws, like the nails of a cat, with which they
hold on to their victim while they bite; and if once fairly fastened
into the flesh, they require to be cut out. While lying at the mouth of
the Revooma River, we had taken on board some green wood, and with it
many centipedes of a similar colour. One night, about a week
afterwards, I had turned in, and had nearly fallen asleep, when I
observed a thing on my curtain--luckily on the outside--which very
quickly made me wide awake. It was a horrid centipede, about nine
inches long. It appeared to be asleep, and had bent itself in the form
of the letter S. I could see its golden-green skin by the light of my
lamp, and its wee shiny eyes, that, I suppose, never close, and for the
moment I was almost terror-struck. I knew if I moved he would be off,
and I might get bitten another time--indeed, I never could have slept
again in my cabin, had he not been taken. The steward came at my call;
and that functionary, by dint of caution and the aid of a pair of
forceps, deposited the creature in a bottle of spirits of wine, which
stood at hand always ready to receive such specimens. I have it now
beside me; and my Scotch landlady, who seemed firmly impressed with the
idea that all my diabolical-looking specimens of lizards and various
other creeping things are the productions of sundry unhappy patients,
remarked concerning my centipede: "He maun hae been a sick and a sore
man ye took that ane oot o', doctor."
But a worse adventure befell an engineer of ours. He was doing duty in
the stokehole, when one of these loathsome creatures actually crept up
under his pantaloons. He was an old sailor, and a cool one, and he knew
that if he attempted to kill or knock it off, the claws would be
inserted on the instant. Cautiously he rolled down his dress, and
spread a handkerchief on his leg a short distance before the centipede,
which was moving slowly and hesitatingly upwards. It was a moment of
intense excitement, both for those around him as well as for the man
himself. Slowly it advanced, once it stopped, then moved on again, and
crossed on to the handkerchief, and the engineer was saved; on which he
immediately got sick, and I was sent for, heard the story, and received
the animal, which I placed beside the other.
More pleasant and amusing companions and cabin mates were the little
ants, a whole colony of which lived in almost every available corner of
my sanctum. Wonderfully wise they are too, and very strong, and very
proud and "clannish." Their prey is the large cockroach. If you kill
one of these, and place it in the centre of the cabin, parties of ants
troop in from every direction--I might say, a regiment from each clan;
and consequently there is a great deal of fighting and squabbling, and
not much is done, except that the cockroach is usually devoured on the
spot. If, however, the dead 'roach be placed near some corner where an
army of ants are encamped, they soon emerge from the camp in hundreds,
down they march in a stream, and proceed forthwith to carry it away.
Slowly up the bulkhead moves the huge brute, impelled by the united
force of half a thousand, and soon he is conveyed to the top. Here,
generally, there is a beam to be crossed, where the whole weight of the
giant 'roach has to be sustained by these Liliputians, with their heads
downward; and more difficult still is the rounding of the corner. Very
often, the ants here make a most egregious mistake; while hundreds are
hauling away at each leg, probably a large number get on top of the
'roach, and begin tugging away with all their might, and consequently
their burden tumbles to the deck; but the second time he is taken up,
this mistake is not made. These creatures send out regular spies, which
return to report when they have found anything worth taking to
headquarters; then the foraging-party goes out, and it is quite a sight
to see the long serpentine line, three or four deep, streaming down the
bulkhead and over the deck, and apparently having no end. They never
march straight before them; their course is always wavy; and it is all
the more strange that those coming up behind should take exactly the
same course, so that the real shape of the line of march never changes.
Perhaps this is effected by the officer-ants, which you may see, one
here, one there, all along the line. By the officer-ants I mean a
large-sized ant (nearly double), that walks along by the side of the
marching army, like ants in authority. They are black (the common ant
being brown), and very important, too, they look, and are no doubt
deeply impressed by the responsibility of their situation and duties,
running hither and thither--first back, then to the side, and sometimes
stopping for an instant with another officer, as if to give or receive
orders, and then hurrying away again. These are the ants, I have no
doubt, that are in command, and also act as engineers and scouts, for
you can always see one or two of them running about, just before the
main body comes on--probably placing signal-staffs, and otherwise
determining the line of march. They seem very energetic officers too,
and allow no obstacle to come in their way, for I have often known the
line of march to lie up one side of my white pants, over my knees, and
down the other. I sat thus once till a whole army passed over me--a
very large army it was too, and mightily tried my patience. When the
rear-guard had passed over, I got up and walked away, which must have
considerably damaged the calculations of the engineers on their march
back.
Of the many species of flies found in my cabin, I shall merely mention
two--namely, the silly fly--which is about the size of a pin-head, and
furnished with two high wings like the sails of a Chinese junk; they
come on board with the bananas, and merit the appellation of _silly_
from the curious habit they have of running about with their noses down,
as if earnestly looking for something which they cannot find; they run a
little way, stop, change their direction, and run a little further, stop
again, and so on, _ad infinitum_, in a manner quite amusing to any one
who has time to look at and observe them--and the hammer-legged fly (the
_Foenus_ of naturalists), which possesses two long hammer-like legs,
that stick out behind, and have a very curious appearance. This fly has
been accused of biting, but I have never found him guilty. He seems to
be continually suffering from a chronic stage of shaking-palsy.
Wherever he alights--which is as often on your nose as anywhere else--he
stands for a few seconds shaking in a manner which is quite distressing
to behold, then flies away, with his two hammers behind him, to alight
and shake on some other place--most likely your neighbour's nose. It
seems to me, indeed, that flies have a penchant for one's nose.
Nothing, too, is more annoying than those same house-flies in warm
countries. Suppose one alights on the extreme end of your nasal
apparatus, you of course drive him off; he describes two circles in the
air, and alights again on the same spot; and this you may do fifty
times, and at the fifty-first time, back he comes with a saucy hum-m,
and takes his seat again, just as if your nose was made for him to go to
roost upon, and for no other purpose at all; so that you are either
obliged to sit and smile complacently with a fly on the end of your
proboscis, or, if you are clever and supple-jointed, follow him all
round the room till you have killed him; then, probably, back you come
with a face beaming with gratification, and sit down to your book again,
when bum-m-m! there is your friend once more, and you have killed the
wrong fly.
In an hospital, nothing is more annoying than these flies; sleep by day
is sometimes entirely out of the question, unless the patient covers his
face, which is by no means agreeable on a hot day. Mosquitoes, too, are
troublesome customers to a stranger, for they seem to prefer the blood
of a stranger to that of any one else. The mosquito is a beautiful,
feathery-horned midge, with long airy legs, and a body and wings that
tremble with their very fineness and grace. The head and shoulders are
bent downward at almost a right angle, as if the creature had fallen on
its head and broken its back; but, for all its beauty, the mosquito is a
hypocritical little scoundrel, who comes singing around you, apparently
so much at his ease, and looking so innocent and gentle, that one would
imagine butter would hardly melt in his naughty little mouth. He
alights upon your skin with such a light and fairy tread, inserts his
tube, and sucks your blood so cleverly, that the mischief is done long
before you are aware, and he is off again singing as merrily as ever.
Probably, if you look about the curtain, you may presently find him
gorged with your blood, and hardly able to fly--an unhappy little midge
now, very sick, and with all his pride fallen; so you catch and kill
him; and serve him right too!
I should deem this chapter incomplete if I omitted to say a word about
another little member of the company in my crowded cabin--a real friend,
too, and a decided enemy to all the rest of the creeping genera about
him. I refer to a chameleon I caught in the woods and tamed. His
principal food consisted in cockroaches, which he caught very cleverly,
and which, before eating, he used to beat against the deck to soften.
He lived in a little stone-jar, which made a very cool house for him,
and to which he periodically retired to rest; and very indignant he was,
too, if any impudent cockroach, in passing, raised itself on its
fore-legs to look in. Instant pursuit was the consequence, and his
colour came and went in a dozen different hues as he seized and beat to
death the intruder on his privacy. He seemed to know me, and crawled
about me. My buttons were his chief attraction; he appeared to think
they were made for him to hang on to by the tail; and he would stand for
five minutes at a time on my shoulder, darting his tongue in every
direction at the unwary flies which came within his reach; and, upon the
whole, I found him a very useful little animal indeed. These lizards
are very common as pets among the sailors on the coast of Africa, who
keep them in queer places sometimes, as the following conversation,
which I heard between two sailors at Cape Town, will show.
"Look here, Jack, what I've got in my 'bacca-box."
"What is it?" said Jack--"an evil spirit?"
"No," said the other, as unconcernedly as if it might have been an evil
spirit, but wasn't--"no! a chameleon;" which he pronounced kammy-lion.
"Queer lion that 'ere, too," replied Jack.
But, indeed, there are few creatures which a sailor will not attempt to
tame.