Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/802

780 The animals who were watching by the lagoon heard this noise and were frightened. They asked each other, "What is it?" Then, as the noise kept coming nearer, they ran away.

Reaching home, they said there was something terrible at the lagoon, that had put to flight the watchers by the well.

When all the animals by the lagoon had gone, the hare drew up water without interference. Then he went down into the well and bathed, so that the water was muddied.

When the next day came all the animals ran to take water, and they found it muddied.

"Oh!" they cried, "who has spoiled our well?"

Saying this, they went and got an image. They made birdlime and smeared it over the image. Then they set it up by the well.

Then, when the sun was again in the middle of the sky, all the animals went and hid in the bush near the well.

The hare came. His calabash cried: "Chan-gañ-gañ-gañ; chan-gañ-gañ-gañ!" He approached the image. He never suspected that all the animals were hidden in the bush.

The hare saluted the image, but the image said nothing. He saluted again, and still the image said nothing.

"Take care" said the hare, "or I will give you a slap."

He gave a slap, and his right hand remained fixed in the birdlime. He slapped with his left hand, and that remained fixed also.

"Oh! oh!" cried he, "let us kick with our feet."

He kicked with his feet. The feet remained fixed, and the hare could not get away.

Then the animals ran out of the bush and came to see the hare and his calabash.

"Shame, shame, O hare!" they cried together. "Did you not agree with us to cut off the tips of your ears, and when it came to your turn to do so, did you not refuse? What! you refused, and yet you come to muddy our water?"

They took whips, they fell upon the hare and they beat him. They beat him so that they nearly killed him,

"We ought to kill you, accursed hare!" they said. "But no—run."

They let him go, and the hare fled. Since then he does not leave the grass.

There was a man of Chama whose wife died. He buried her and mourned for her; and one day, in the evening, when he was