Belinda dashed out of the hole.
She headed straight for George, who was hiding under a bit of stick. He’d followed the Hoo-Min for quite a long way and was now watching it, fascinated.
He didn’t see what the Hoo-Min was doing. But Belinda did.
The Hoo-Min was bending and straightening. It was lifting things.
It was lifting sticks.
Its big feeler was reaching out. It was reaching for the stick that George was hiding under.
Belinda ran, signalling frantically for George to come to her, but George wasn’t noticing anything except the Hoo-Min. It was so big and so close that George couldn’t make out what it was doing – until the stick that was covering him was suddenly lifted away.
George was out in the open! The Hoo-Min could see him!
The Hoo-Min straightened up. Its shadow covered everything as it raised its top leg with the stick in its feeler.
The stick it had just picked up came down again. Very hard.
WHACK! Right on the ground where George was. If centipedes could shriek, Belinda would have shrieked. But after all, the stick didn’t land where George was, but where George had been half a second before.
He shot out of the way just as the stick came down.
The stick came down again.
And again.
It beat the earth.
Whack! Whack! Whack!
George ran frantically here and there, dodging the stick. But he couldn’t really dodge it. He didn’t know where it would hit next. He was more frightened than he had ever been before in his life.
He just twisted and turned and raced here and there. It was only good luck that the beating stick kept missing him. Sooner or later, it must find him!
Suddenly the stick fell to the ground. The Hoo-Min let it go.
George stopped running.
He looked around. The Hoo-Min was leaving the ground and coming back to it very heavily. The noise and vibrations were thunderous. It kept making noises from its head, as well. Noises that sounded like “OW! OW! OW!”
Can you guess what had happened?
Right! That brave mother centipede, Belinda, had run up the Hoo-Min’s trouser and given its leg a mighty bite!