Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/336

312 cared to keep uninjured. When he had got up to the ledge of rock by which he could reach them, however, and found that they seemed already stone dead, seeing that to wreak any vengeance on creatures that could not feel would be childish, he contented himself with throwing them below one by one, calling out as he did so the number to each. In this way he had thrown over the seventy; last of all there remained the wise parrot, but the net having fallen upon him he was rather longer loosing him than the rest, so that he had called out "Seventy-one!" before he was ready to throw him down, moreover, his whetstone happening at that same instant to tumble out of his girdle, the other parrots took the sound of its fall for that of the wise parrot, and all of them together they spread their wings and flew far away.

The birdcatcher saw this in time before he had let go his hold of the wise parrot.

"Ah! vile, cunning parrots," he exclaimed in great wrath and indignation, "what labour have you given me, and at last I have no benefit for my exertion! One, at least, of you is still in my power, and on him will I be avenged for the mischief of all the rest; I will take him home and torture him at leisure, and then cook him alive. The wise parrot heard all this, but thought to wait till his fury was a little spent. But finding as time wore on the man only got more and more wroth; and the matter beginning to get serious,