1'OUNDING OF SLAVE-MAKING COMMUNES 



munication of antennal signals; the drafting of the red 

 warriors from whom the attacking contingent is drawn, 

 and the gathering of the black auxiliaries to tarre on the 

 belligerents, though in sooth they need no such "very 

 pregnant and potential spurs." We would note the 

 forward movement; the ordered march; the vanguard 

 action with skirmishers from the assailed commune; the 

 fierce scaling of the Subserieean barricades, and the 

 plunge into the cleared ways. We would see, perhaps 

 pity, the futile efforts of the besieged to enguard their 

 commune gates; the flight of the inmates, bearing their 

 young, from the pillaged nest; the woe-begone groups of 

 refugees hiding in the vicinage; the little knots of com- 

 batants scattered here and there around the field, the 

 melancholy tailings of a lost battle; the maimed, the 

 dying, the dead scattered here and there. We would 

 follow the return column of raiders laden with their 

 booty of larvae and pupa*, and occasionally adult blacks, 

 as tender-hefted in this office as they had been ruthless 

 in assail; the heartening of the pillaged Subsericeans 

 as they see their foes retiring ; the occasional rallies and 

 rear-guard attacks to recover some of the spoil, and not 

 always in vain. We might feel, perhaps, a flush of in- 

 dignation at the welcome of the well-guerdoned spoilers 

 to their home commune, with every token of satisfac- 

 tion (except noise!); and, on the other hand, a touch of 

 sympathy at the gradual return of the refugees to their 

 desolate city, with the young saved from the common 

 spoilage, to take up again the role of communal life. 

 All these incidents unite to form an event unique and of 

 transcendent interest. 



A faithful description thereof, were it published with 

 the bare substitution of human names, would need scant 



-ill 



