Off coat, however, if you please; for we shall have a tough job of it." It cost us an hour's hard work; for we had to rip up the planks along the whole of the verandah, then to shape a course across two cellars, or _godongs_, as they are called in the East, and finally the traverses of these singular insects obliged us to cut a trench to the huge hillock or nest, which rose to the height of five or six feet from the ground, in numberless shoots, like pinnacles round the roof of a Gothic church.

We might have attacked them at headquarters in the first instance, had we wished it; but the Admiral chose to go more technically to work, and to sap up to his enemy by regular approaches.
In this way we had the means of seeing the principles upon which these ants proceed in securing themselves, at every step of their progress, by galleries or covered ways, which, though extremely feeble, are sufficiently strong to keep off the attacks of every other kind of ant.

It is curious enough, that, although the white ant be the most destructive of its species, it is said to be, individually, by far the weakest, and cannot move a step without the artificial protection of the galleries it constructs as it goes along; just as the besiegers of a fortification secure themselves in their trenches and zigzags.
We now brought our spades into play; and having cut the hill across, laid open the secrets of these most curious of all the ant tribe.

At last we reached the great queen ant, the mother of millions of her race, a most enormous personage to be sure, nearly four inches long, and as thick as a man's finger, with a head not larger than that of a bee, but a body such as I have described, filled with eggs, which continually rolled out like a fluid from a reservoir.

Never shall I forget the shout of rapture which the gallant Admiral sent over half the harbour, as he succeeded in gaining the object of his labour.
There are some men who go about everything they undertake with all their hearts and souls, and this great officer was one of those.