Page:Tales from the Indian Epics.djvu/25

Rh looked about him for water. As he looked about him, the beggar man crept nearer and nearer. At last Uttanka saw in the distance a beautiful pool of water. At first he thought it was a mirage, but when he came closer to it he saw that it was a real pool and that a beautiful fresh breeze blew over it and rippled its surface. With a cry of joy Uttanka ran towards it. As he ran, the beggar man ran close behind him, and when Uttanka put on the ground the queen's earrings that he might more easily drink the water, the beggar man deftly picked them up and ran away. Uttanka did not at first notice the theft. But after he had drunk his fill and had bathed his face and hands he looked round and saw the beggar man running away as fast as he could with the queen's priceless earrings in his hand. Uttanka sprang to his feet and after a long chase caught up the beggar man and seized him. At the same moment the beggar man, who was really Takshaka, a prince of the snake people, once more assumed the form of a mighty snake, and with a noise that was half a hiss and half a derisive laugh vanished into a snake burrow that opened close to Uttanka's feet.

The boy now grieved that he had not heeded the queen's warning. "The beggar man," he murmured sadly to himself, "must be Prince Takshaka." He then tried to force his way through the hole by which the snake prince had gone. But his shoulders stuck in the entrance. Next he strove to widen it with a stick, but the earth fell in and blocked the hole altogether. Then he sat down by the hole and wept bitterly. The god Indra from Amravati saw the Brahman boy's grief, and seizing a thunderbolt said to it, "Go and help Uttanka." Straightway the thunderbolt left the god Indra's hand