Page:Eminent Authors of Contemporary Japan, volume 2.pdf/87

Rh Hell. The thought of such a thing happening was terrible to him after the awful anxiety of his laborious and painstaking climb. While he was thus meditating, he looked below him again, and he beheld thousands of other sinners climbing up behind him in a long line. They were crawling up the fine, silken thread, gradually getting nearer and nearer. He realised that unless he did something at once to get rid of them, the web would certainly snap, and he would fall.

So he cried out as loudly as he could:

“Listen, all of you! This cobweb is mine! Who gave you permission to climb it? Go down again, you scoundrels! Go down!”

Till then the cobweb had seemed quite strong, but suddenly, with a sharp sound, it snapped just at the place where he was desperately clutching to it, and lo! poor Kandatta was hurled head foremost into the abyss below, tumbling and tumbling with the lightning pace of a spinning top.

Behind him hung the remainder of the web leading to Paradise, delicately glittering midway in the dark starless sky.

Buddha stood on the Lotus Pond, and gazed at the scene below. He had seen all that had happened. He saw Kandatta falling, and when at last he saw the poor man sink like a stone in the Bloody Pond, he raised his sorrowful face, and moved slowly away from the Lotus Pond and resumed his walk. What sorrow it must have brought to his kindly heart to have beheld the egotistical cruelty of Kandatta in his attempts to