IS8 THE ADVENTURES OF 



something more to be seen than a mere cave. A heap of reddish 

 earth in one corner attracted Sumichrast's attention, who ex- 

 amined it to see if he could discover some fossil bones. Stand- 

 ing all together, we must have formed, by the smoky light 

 of our odoriferous torches, rather a fantastic-looking group. 

 More than half an hour elapsed without discovering any results 

 from our digging. L'Encuerado, who had tried to crawl in 

 between the roof and the ground, suddenly raised an exclama- 

 tion; he had, in fact, all but fallen into a deep pit. In an 

 instant, I was laid down flat on my stomach and crawling towards 

 the Indian ; Lucien, owing to his size, was able to creep on his 

 hands and feet, and consequently soon got in front of me. We 

 could soon see down into the bottom of the hole ; the burning 

 fragments of our torches fell upon a heap of stones at a depth of 

 twelve to fifteen feet. L'Encuerado threw one of the torches into 

 the chasm, and the vague glimmer showed us a yawning opening 

 on the left. Delighted with this discovery, we now beat a 

 retreat, deferring a more thorough exploration until the next 

 day. 



The night was dark, and during our absence the fire had 

 almost gone out. Just below us, a tree, the outline of which 

 we could scarcely distinguish, seemed covered with animated 

 sparks. Lucien opened his eyes very widely indeed, not being 

 in the least able to understand this phenomenon, which was 

 produced by thousands of elaterides, insects which have on each 

 side of the thorax a yellowish spot which becomes luminous in 

 the dark. 



Nothing could be more curious than to see innumerable 

 glittering spots rising, falling, and crossing one another with 

 extraordinary rapidity ; one might have fancied it a tree bearing 

 flowers of fire waving about in the breeze. L'Encuerado came up 

 with a specimen which lighted up his hand with a greenish 

 glimmer. Lucien took possession of it, and the two luminous 

 spots looked to him like two enormous eyes. Suddenly the 

 insect gave a kind of shock to the boy's fingers, who looked 

 at us full of surprise. 



"The name of the insect," said Sumichrast, "is derived from 



