No matter how threatening the termites might be, the human beings must not hesitate.

If they could not drive the insects away, they must share their abode.
At the bottom of this cone, made with a kind of reddish clay, there was a very narrow hole.

Hercules enlarged it with his cutlass in a few moments, so as to give a passage even to a man like himself.
To Cousin Benedict's extreme surprise, not one of the thousands of termites that ought to occupy the ant-hill showed itself.

Was, then, the cone abandoned?
The hole enlarged, Dick and his companions glided into it.

Hercules disappeared the last, just as the rain fell with such rage that it seemed to extinguish the lightnings.
But those wind squalls were no longer to be feared.