Andrew Lang_Fairy Book 09 (35 page)

The two adversaries were only too glad to be allowed to rest, and
believed to the end of their days that, after all, the tortoise
was stronger than either of them.

A day or two later the young tortoise was taking a stroll, when
he met a fox, and stopped to speak to him. 'Let us try,' said he
in a careless manner, 'which of us can lie buried in the ground
during seven years.'

'I shall be delighted,' answered the fox, 'only I would rather
that you began.'

'It is all the same to me,' replied the tortoise; 'if you come
round this way to-morrow you will see that I have fulfilled my
part of the bargain.'

So he looked about for a suitable place, and found a convenient
hole at the foot of an orange tree. He crept into it, and the
next morning the fox heaped up the earth round him, and promised
to feed him every day with fresh fruit. The fox so far kept his
word that each morning when the sun rose he appeared to ask how
the tortoise was getting on. 'Oh, very well; but I wish you
would give me some fruit,' replied he.

'Alas! the fruit is not ripe enough yet for you to eat,' answered
the fox, who hoped that the tortoise would die of hunger long
before the seven years were over.

'Oh dear, oh dear! I am so hungry!' cried the tortoise.

'I am sure you must be; but it will be all right to-morrow,' said
the fox, trotting off, not knowing that the oranges dropped down
the hollow trunk, straight into the tortoise's hole, and that he
had as many as he could possibly eat.

So the seven years went by; and when the tortoise came out of his
hole he was as fat as ever.

Now it was the fox's turn, and he chose his hole, and the
tortoise heaped the earth round, promising to return every day or
two with a nice young bird for his dinner. 'Well, how are you
getting on?' he would ask cheerfully when he paid his visits.

'Oh, all right; only I wish you had brought a bird with you,'
answered the fox.

'I have been so unlucky, I have never been able to catch one,'
replied the tortoise. 'However, I shall be more fortunate to-
morrow, I am sure.'

But not many to-morrows after, when the tortoise arrived with his
usual question: 'Well, how are you getting on?' he received no
answer, for the fox was lying in his hole quite still, dead of
hunger.

By this time the tortoise was grown up, and was looked up to
throughout the forest as a person to be feared for his strength
and wisdom. But he was not considered a very swift runner, until
an adventure with a deer added to his fame.

One day, when he was basking in the sun, a stag passed by, and
stopped for a little conversation. 'Would you care to see which
of us can run fastest?' asked the tortoise, after some talk. The
stag thought the question so silly that he only shrugged his
shoulders. 'Of course, the victor would have the right to kill
the other,' went on the tortoise. 'Oh, on that condition I
agree,' answered the deer; 'but I am afraid you are a dead man.'

'It is no use trying to frighten me,' replied the tortoise. 'But
I should like three days for training; then I shall be ready to
start when the sun strikes on the big tree at the edge of the
great clearing.'

The first thing the tortoise did was to call his brothers and his
cousins together, and he posted them carefully under ferns all
along the line of the great clearing, making a sort of ladder
which stretched for many miles. This done to his satisfaction,
he went back to the starting place.

The stag was quite punctual, and as soon as the sun's rays struck
the trunk of the tree the stag started off, and was soon far out
of the sight of the tortoise. Every now and then he would turn
his head as he ran, and call out: 'How are you getting on?' and
the tortoise who happened to be nearest at that moment would
answer: 'All right, I am close up to you.'

Full of astonishment, the stag would redouble his efforts, but it
was no use. Each time he asked: 'Are you there?' the answer
would come: 'Yes, of course, where else should I be?' And the
stag ran, and ran, and ran, till he could run no more, and
dropped down dead on the grass.

And the tortoise, when he thinks about it, laughs still.

But the tortoise was not the only creature of whose tricks
stories were told in the forest. There was a famous monkey who
was just as clever and more mischievous, because he was so much
quicker on his feet and with his hands. It was quite impossible
to catch him and give him the thrashing he so often deserved, for
he just swung himself up into a tree and laughed at the angry
victim who was sitting below. Sometimes, however, the
inhabitants of the forest were so foolish as to provoke him, and
then they got the worst of it. This was what happened to the
barber, whom the monkey visited one morning, saying that he
wished to be shaved. The barber bowed politely to his customer,
and begging him to be seated, tied a large cloth round his neck,
and rubbed his chin with soap; but instead of cutting off his
beard, the barber made a snip at the end of his tail. It was
only a very little bit and the monkey started up more in rage
than in pain. 'Give me back the end of my tail,' he roared, 'or
I will take one of your razors.' The barber refused to give back
the missing piece, so the monkey caught up a razor from the table
and ran away with it, and no one in the forest could be shaved
for days, as there was not another to be got for miles and miles.

As he was making his way to his own particular palm-tree, where
the cocoanuts grew, which were so useful for pelting passers-by,
he met a woman who was scaling a fish with a bit of wood, for in
this side of the forest a few people lived in huts near the
river.

'That must be hard work,' said the monkey, stopping to look; 'try
my knife—you will get on quicker.' And he handed her the razor
as he spoke. A few days later he came back and rapped at the
door of the hut. 'I have called for my razor,' he said, when the
woman appeared.

'I have lost it,' answered she.

'If you don't give it to me at once I will take your sardine,'
replied the monkey, who did not believe her. The woman protested
she had not got the knife, so he took the sardine and ran off.

A little further along he saw a baker who was standing at the
door, eating one of his loaves. 'That must be rather dry,' said
the monkey, 'try my fish'; and the man did not need twice
telling. A few days later the monkey stopped again at the
baker's hut. 'I've called for that fish,' he said.

'That fish? But I have eaten it!' exclaimed the baker in dismay.

'If you have eaten it I shall take this barrel of meal in
exchange,' replied the monkey; and he walked off with the barrel
under his arm.

As he went he saw a woman with a group of little girls round her,
teaching them how to dress hair. 'Here is something to make
cakes for the children,' he said, putting down his barrel, which
by this time he found rather heavy. The children were delighted,
and ran directly to find some flat stones to bake their cakes on,
and when they had made and eaten them, they thought they had
never tasted anything so nice. Indeed, when they saw the monkey
approaching not long after, they rushed to meet him, hoping that
he was bringing them some more presents. But he took no notice
of their questions, he only said to their mother: 'I've called
for my barrel of meal.'

'Why, you gave it to me to make cakes of!' cried the mother.

'If I can't get my barrel of meal, I shall take one of your
children,' answered the monkey. 'I am in want of somebody who
can bake my bread when I am tired of fruit, and who knows how to
make cocoanut cakes.'

'Oh, leave me my child, and I will find you another barrel of
meal,' wept the mother.

'I don't WANT another barrel, I want THAT one,' answered the
monkey sternly. And as the woman stood wringing her hands, he
caught up the little girl that he thought the prettiest and took
her to his home in the palm tree.

She never went back to the hut, but on the whole she was not much
to be pitied, for monkeys are nearly as good as children to play
with, and they taught her how to swing, and to climb, and to fly
from tree to tree, and everything else they knew, which was a
great deal.

Now the monkey's tiresome tricks had made him many enemies in the
forest, but no one hated him so much as the puma. The cause of
their quarrel was known only to themselves, but everybody was
aware of the fact, and took care to be out of the way when there
was any chance of these two meeting. Often and often the puma
had laid traps for the monkey, which he felt sure his foe could
not escape; and the monkey would pretend that he saw nothing, and
rejoice the hidden puma's heart by seeming to walk straight into
the snare, when, lo! a loud laugh would be heard, and the
monkey's grinning face would peer out of a mass of creepers and
disappear before his foe could reach him.

This state of things had gone on for quite a long while, when at
last there came a season such as the oldest parrot in the forest
could never remember. Instead of two or three hundred inches of
rain falling, which they were all accustomed to, month after
month passed without a cloud, and the rivers and springs dried
up, till there was only one small pool left for everyone to drink
from. There was not an animal for miles round that did not
grieve over this shocking condition of affairs, not one at least
except the puma. His only thought for years had been how to get
the monkey into his power, and this time he imagined his chance
had really arrived. He would hide himself in a thicket, and when
the monkey came down to drink—and come he must—the puma would
spring out and seize him. Yes, on this occasion there could be
no escape!

And no more there would have been if the puma had had greater
patience; but in his excitement he moved a little too soon. The
monkey, who was stooping to drink, heard a rustling, and turning
caught the gleam of two yellow, murderous eyes. With a mighty
spring he grasped a creeper which was hanging above him, and
landed himself on the branch of a tree; feeling the breath of the
puma on his feet as the animal bounded from is cover. Never had
the monkey been so near death, and it was some time before he
recovered enough courage to venture on the ground again.

Up there in the shelter of the trees, he began to turn over in
his head plans for escaping the snares of the puma. And at
length chance helped him. Peeping down to the earth, he saw a
man coming along the path carrying on his head a large gourd
filled with honey.

He waited till the man was just underneath the tree, then he hung
from a bough, and caught the gourd while the man looked up
wondering, for he was no tree-climber. Then the monkey rubbed
the honey all over him, and a quantity of leaves from a creeper
that was hanging close by; he stuck them all close together into
the honey, so that he looked like a walking bush. This finished,
he ran to the pool to see the result, and, quite pleased with
himself, set out in search of adventures.

Soon the report went through the forest that a new animal had
appeared from no one knew where, and that when somebody had asked
his name, the strange creature had answered that it was Jack-in-
the-Green. Thanks to this, the monkey was allowed to drink at
the pool as often as he liked, for neither beast nor bird had the
faintest notion who he was. And if they made any inquiries the
only answer they got was that the water of which he had drunk
deeply had turned his hair into leaves, so that they all knew
what would happen in case they became too greedy.

By-and-by the great rains began again. The rivers and streams
filled up, and there was no need for him to go back to the pool,
near the home of his enemy, the puma, as there was a large number
of places for him to choose from. So one night, when everything
was still and silent, and even the chattering parrots were asleep
on one leg, the monkey stole down softly from his perch, and
washed off the honey and the leaves, and came out from his bath
in his own proper skin. On his way to breakfast he met a rabbit,
and stopped for a little talk.

'I am feeling rather dull,' he remarked; 'I think it would do me
good to hunt a while. What do you say?'

'Oh, I am quite willing,' answered the rabbit, proud of being
spoken to by such a large creature. 'But the question is, what
shall we hunt?'

'There is no credit in going after an elephant or a tiger,'
replied the monkey stroking his chin, 'they are so big they could
not possibly get out of your way. It shows much more skill to be
able to catch a small thing that can hide itself in a moment
behind a leaf. I'll tell you what! Suppose I hunt butterflies,
and you, serpents.'

The rabbit, who was young and without experience, was delighted
with this idea, and they both set out on their various ways.

The monkey quietly climbed up the nearest tree, and ate fruit
most of the day, but the rabbit tired himself to death poking his
nose into every heap of dried leaves he saw, hoping to find a
serpent among them. Luckily for himself the serpents were all
away for the afternoon, at a meeting of their own, for there is
nothing a serpent likes so well for dinner as a nice plump
rabbit. But, as it was, the dried leaves were all empty, and the
rabbit at last fell asleep where he was. Then the monkey, who
had been watching him, fell down and pulled his ears, to the rage
of the rabbit, who vowed vengeance.

It was not easy to catch the monkey off his guard, and the rabbit
waited long before an opportunity arrived. But one day Jack-in-
the-Green was sitting on a stone, wondering what he should do
next, when the rabbit crept softly behind him, and gave his tail
a sharp pull. The monkey gave a shriek of pain, and darted up
into a tree, but when he saw that it was only the rabbit who had
dared to insult him so, he chattered so fast in his anger, and
looked so fierce, that the rabbit fled into the nearest hole, and
stayed there for several days, trembling with fright.