Page:Where Animals Talk (West African folk lore tales).djvu/118

 to Adder's house, and found him distended with this stomach. Squirrel asked him, "Chum! have you been at my house?" Adder answered, "Yes, I went to your house; but I have done nothing there." Squirrel asked him, feeling sure of his guilt, "But, where then are my children? Why did you not leave even one of them? Ah! my friend!" Adder replied, "When we drank the Test, did I not swear the truth that if I met with your children, I would swallow them?" Squirrel answered, "Yes! and you have kept your word well! But you shall see something just now and here!" Adder laughed, and said, "What can you do? You have no strength like mine."

Close by the house of Adder (which was only a hole in the ground) was a large tree. Squirrel went out of the house, and climbed to the top of the tree. There he began to wail for his dead, and cried out, "Ikundu ja mâ! Ikundu ja mâ!" (A play on words: either an apostrophe to the name of one of his children, or a prayer for vengeance). Another squirrel, that was a mile or two away, heard the wailing; and it came to where Squirrel was. Also his wife followed Squirrel to that tree; and she wailed too. And other squirrels came; about twenty.

A hunter, living in the town of Mankind, started from his town to go hunting. Coming along the path, he heard Squirrel crying. Looking up, he exclaimed, "O! how many squirrels!" He thought to himself, "Why do these animals make this noise, and keep looking down at the foot of this big tree?"

He approached near to the tree; and they dispersed among the branches. He then said to himself, "I will look around here at the bottom; for, as those squirrels continue their cry, they keep looking down here." Searching at the foot of the tree, he saw a hole, like the home of some beast. Looking in, he saw the Adder sluggish in his distention. The hunter killed it with his machete. And he took the dead adder with him to the town of Mankind.

Squirrel, from the tree-top, shouted after dead Adder, "You have seen my promised Ikundu." (Another play on words; either—"You saw my child;" or, "You see my Vengeance.")