Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/801

Rh the lamentations of the young woman, and he crept up close and lay hid.

Then the husband said again, "I am hungry" and the wife sobbed and wept, but said nothing, for everything was finished.

Then the husband turned himself back into a leopard, and crouched down to spring upon her. He was just making a leap, when the hunter fired his gun, "Bang!" and he fell down. He was dead.

Then the hunter came out of the bushes. He spoke to the young woman and lifted her up. He cut off the tail of the leopard, and took the young woman to his house, where he made her his wife.

And this is the way of young maidens. The young men come to ask, and the young maidens refuse. They refuse again, again, and again, until at last the wild beasts turn themselves into men and come and carry them off.

This is a story of the hare and the other animals.

The dry weather was parching up the earth into hardness. There was no dew, and even the denizens of the water suffered from thirst. Soon famine came, and the animals, having nothing to eat, assembled in council.

"What shall we do," said they, "to keep ourselves from dying of thirst?" And they deliberated a long time.

At last it was decided that each animal should cut off the tips of his ears and extract the fat from them. Then all the fat would be collected and sold, and with the money they would get for the fat they would buy a hoe and dig a well, so as to get some water.

And all cried: "It is well. Let us cut off the tips of our ears."

They did so, but when it came to the turn of the hare to cut off his ears he refused, and that is why his ears are so long.

The other animals were astonished at this conduct, but they said nothing. They took up the ear-tips, extracted the fat, went and sold all, and bought a hoe with the money.

They brought back the hoe and began to dig a well in the dry bed of a lagoon. "Ha! here is water at last. Now we can slake our thirst a little."

The hare was not there, but, when the sun was in the middle of the sky, he took a calabash and went toward the well.

As he walked along, the calabash dragged on the ground and made a great noise. It said: "Chan-gañ-gañ-gañ; chan-gañ-gañ-gañ!"