Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/436

320 let you eat me. On the contrary, it is you that I am going to destroy. For you in your folly have not seen that I was outwitting you. If we die, we die both together; for I will cut off this head of yours, and cast it to the ground!" And so saying, he gave the crane's neck a grip with his claws, as with a vice.

Then gasping, and with tears trickling from his eyes, and trembling with the fear of death, the crane beseeched him, saying, "O my Lord! Indeed I did not intend to eat you. Grant me my life!"

"Well, well! step down into the pond, and put me in there."

And he turned round and stepped down into the pond, and placed the crab on the mud at its edge. But the crab cut through its neck as clean as one would cut a lotus-stalk with a hunting-knife, and then only entered the water!

When the Genius who lived in the Varaṇa-tree saw this strange affair, he made the wood resound with his plaudits, uttering in a pleasant voice the verse —

"The villain, though exceeding clever, Shall prosper not by his villany. He may win indeed, sharp-witted in deceit, But only as the Crane here from the Crab!"

When the Teacher had finished this discourse, showing that "Not now only, O mendicants, has this man been outwitted by the country robe-maker, long ago he was outwitted in the same way," he established the connexion,