294 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 
struggled past—tired, hopeless, bewildered, 
idiotic and thoughtless to the last. Then some 
half dead Eciton straggled from the circle along 
the beach, and threw the line behind him into 
confusion. The desperation of total exhaustion 
had accomplished what necessity and opportu- 
nity and normal life could not. Several others 
followed his scent instead of that leading back 
toward the out-house, and as an amoeba gradu- 
ally flows into one of its own pseudopodia, so the 
forlorn hope of the great Eciton army passed 
slowly down the beach and on into the jungle. 
Would they die singly and in bewildered groups, 
or would the remnant draw together, and again 
guided by the super-mind of its Mentor lay the 
foundation of another army, and again come to 
nest in my out-house? 
Thus was the ending still unfinished, the finale 
buried in the future—and in this we find the 
fascination of Nature and of Science. Who can - 
be bored for a moment in the short existence 
vouchsafed us here; with dramatic beginnings 
barely hidden in the dust, with the excitement of 
every moment of the present, and with all of cos- 
mic possibility lying just concealed in the future, 
whether of Betelgeuze, of Amoeba or—of our- 
selves? Vogue la galére! 
