Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Empire of the Ants Herbert George Wells

The Empire of the Ants Herbert George Wells

Benitez, Paula
Wells, Herbert George

Paperback

Fiction Anthologies

ISBN10: 1545035040
ISBN13: 9781545035047
Publisher: Createspace
Published: Mar 30 2017
Pages: 28
Weight: 0.12
Height: 0.07 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The Empire of the Ants features a Brazilian captain, Gerilleau, who is ordered to take his gunboat, the Benjamin Constant, to assist the inhabitants of the town of Batama, in the Upper Amazon, against a plague of ants.[1] A Lancashire engineer named Holroyd, from whose point of view the story is, for the most part, told, accompanies him. They find a species of large black ant that has evolved advanced intelligence and has used it to make tools and organize aggression. Before arriving in Badama, Captain Gerilleau encounters a cuberta[2] which has been taken over by the ants, which have killed and mutilated two sailors. After Capt. Gerilleau sends his second in command, Lieutenant da Cunha, aboard the vessel, the ants attack him and he dies painfully hours later, apparently poisoned. The next day, after burning the cuberta, the Benjamin Constant arrives off Badama. The town is deserted and all its inhabitants dead or dispersed. Fearing the ants and their poison, Capt. Gerilleau contents himself with firing de big gun at the town twice, with minimal effect. He then demands what else was there to do? (variants of this phrase are used throughout the story when discussing the ants) and returns downstream for orders.[3] A final section reports that Holroyd has returned to England to warn the authorities about the ants before it is too late.

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