Part 16

Down dropped a Red King at her side. He stared at her right royally, and kept right royal silence, yet there was kindness in his yellow face, and kindness in the purr of his departure.

Down dropped a Black Queen in his place, and danced and hummed about her, and measured her slim-waistedness, and buzzed her disapproval.--"What is it?" asked she snappishly. "Why does it come in this get-up? Where has it left its furs?"

"It never had furs," said a voice behind her. It was her Mistress of the Robes.

"I know the family, Ma'am. Queer clothes, of course. But artists, Ma'am, artists to the toe-tips."

"Artists in what?" said the Black Queen.

"In Sand, Ma'am, in Sand. See, she's starting now."

"That's hive-bee's work," said the Black Queen contemptuously.

"The art comes at the finish, Ma'am----"

"Well, call me when it comes," said the Black Queen, "and keep her off the nurseries, and clean that eleventh cell of mine, and wait till I come back. She soared up skywards, fussily, cleared the cliff's head, circled three times about, and set a straight course south.

"Good riddance!" said the Mistress of the Robes.

"They're like that everywhere," said Spinipes. "What are her nurseries to me? Black Queens and black sand go together. Now this is red sand. I feel the grip and bind of it."

She was quite right. The ledge was rain-washed silt. Sunshine had bleached the outer crust of it, but, under this, its substance was brick-red--fine ground stuff too, damp, clingy, easily tunnelled, and easily smarmed into a hold-fast mortar.

"In that case," said the Mistress of the Robes, "I may as well be going."

Slowly she floated off the ledge, yet kept her face towards it. Slowly she tacked from side to side, in dipping, widening sweeps. Slowly she passed the cliff's east edge, and disappeared.

Then Spinipes commenced to dig in earnest.

Her scissor-jaws worked viciously, carved four-square pellets from the sun-baked crust, gripped them and flung them backwards. As she engaged the softer soil, she added feverish foot-work, and scraped, and rasped, and scrabbled it, and kicked it back in dust-clouds. Her head was quickly buried, next her waist, and, presently, she disappeared completely.

But not for long.

She backed up to the surface, dragging a sand-load underneath her body. She shook this clear, and, without resting, dived afresh. Ten loads in all she raised, and each one meant a longer spell below. For she had more to do than dig. From end to end her shaft must needs be glazed--and this meant patient mouth-work, deft steadying touches as the mortar set, and skill to keep her tube's round symmetry, and guide it in a gentle curve to end in quiet darkness. Three inches down she sank, and, at the bottom, drove a slant, and hollowed out a store-room.

With this the first stage ended. She left her shaft, and, poising in mid-air, made survey of the ledge. To right she swerved, to left again, outwards and back, upwards and down, until its bearings east and west, from sky above, and earth below, were rooted in her memory.

So far, so good--her morning's work was done, the picture of it fixed into her mind. Upwards she soared until the receding cliff shrunk to a splotch of brown. Once more she took her bearings and was satisfied, set her course east, and, with a dropping arrow's flight, came to the hill-top coppice. She landed on the bramble hedge which skirts its western clearing.

"Good hunting, sister!" said the Ophion Fly. She sat on a high briar-leaf, her rainbow wings uplifted.

"It's hardly time for that," said Spinipes. "To-morrow, p'raps. To-day I feed myself."

"There's lucerne on the slope," the Ophion said, "and something underneath you."

There was a snap and flicker in the grass, and presently appeared a pygmy beetle, long-snouted, dusty-coated, trailing its slow legs wearily.

"D'you see it?" said the Ophion Fly.

"I see it, but what of it?"

"It means good hunting, sister. Green grubs, black-headed, fatted. Too small for me, but just the size for you. You'll find them in the lucerne."

"Thank you," said Spinipes, but she was half across the field, a dancing, filmy wisp of pink, wind-borne.