CHAPTERVTHE JACKAL AND HIS TRACKSrhinoThereseemed to be no animal in the forest or the swamp or on the plain about which the Alo Man did not know a story. In the nine hundred thousand miles of country, more or less, through which the Congo and its branches flow, there is land suitable for almost every kind of wild creature known to Africa. Elephants, buffalo, wild cattle, rhinoceros, antelope, koodoo, eland, giraffes, pigs, and other grazing and browsing animals wander over the grassy table-lands. Hippopotami, crocodiles, and other water creatures live in the rivers and swamps, and among the beasts of prey are lions, leopards, hyenas, and jackals, although the jackal is not much to be feared. Monkeys large and smallare numerous in the forests, and in a part of the forest so old and deep that the people call it the Plantations of God, the gorilla is sometimes found. In the Alo Man’s stories, however, the smaller animals almost always had the best of it. They also had much more to say for themselves at night. As the old people put it, it is not always the biggest man whose words come in crowds.“Do you know the reason why the hyena’s legs are not alike?” asked the Alo Man one night after supper, when there was a great to-do out in the darkness.No one did, and of course every one wanted to hear the story of the Hyena and the Jackal.I often recall [began the Alo Man] the days when the animals could talk and the Hyena and the Jackal lived in the same village. One day they were looking up at the clouds.“They are very thick and white,” said the Jackal. “Can it be possible that they are solid white fat?”The Jackal waited until one cloud floated quite near the earth, and then he climbed a tree and sprang into the very middle of that cloud.jackal and hyena[That the Jackal should climb a tree did not seem strange to any of the listeners when the Alo Man told the story; all of them had seen a man climb a palm tree for nuts by looping two ropes around the trunk and putting his feet in one and the other by turns, walking up the trunk to the very top.]“I was right,” said the Jackal; “it is the most delicious white fat.”Then he ate and ate, until he was so full that he was afraid to try to climb down the tree.“I am coming down!” cried the Jackal to the Hyena. “Catch me as I fall, or I shall be hurt.”The Hyena planted her feet firmly in the earth and arched her back, and when the Jackal jumped he landed on her back unhurt.“Thank you,” said he, but he was not really grateful at all. He was already planning to play a joke on the Hyena.“Climb up on the cloud and eat some of the good white fat,” said he. “It is the finest food I have ever eaten in my life.”The Hyena was glad to hear that the Jackal had left some for her, and she climbed the tree and jumped out upon the cloud and began to eat. She ate and ate, as the Jackal had done,until she was so full that she did not dare to try to climb down the tree.“I am coming down! Catch me!” she called to the Jackal, and he planted his four feet firmly in the ground and stood under the cloud. But as she jumped he stepped back, and down came the Hyena on her hind legs. So far and so hard did she fall that her hind legs were driven into her body, and have ever since been shorter than her fore legs, as you may see to this day.But the Jackal’s turn came in time, for no dog is top dog in every fight. This is what happened to him.One day the sun came down into the forest and sat down on the soft green earth, to rest. The Jackal came by and saw the sun resting there, and his eyes were dazzled so that he thought it was a goat. Now a goat would make him a fine dinner, so he pounced upon it quickly and put it in a sack and threw the sack over his shoulders to carry home.He had not traveled far when the sun began to burn his shoulders.“Oh! oh! oh!” cried the Jackal, trying to throw the sun off his shoulders. “Get down! get down!”But the sun would not get down until he wasquite ready, and the Jackal’s back was scorched in a long black stripe which he wears to this day.When the Hyena saw the long black stripe she howled with delight, and ever since then, when the Hyena and the Jackal meet and the Hyena sees the stripe on the Jackal’s back, the Hyena laughs and the Jackal yelps, just as you hear them doing now [concluded the Alo Man].The Hyena and the Jackal were certainly making an uncommon racket even for them, and then, quite suddenly, they stopped.“The Jackal must have been at his old tricks again,” said the Alo Man. “It sounds as if he still remembered what he did in the time of the great drought.”“Tell about it,” begged the girls.“Yes, tell about it; that is a good story,” said Mpoko. He had heard it before.In this forest region the air was so hot and moist that such a thing as a drought was almost unknown, but the people all knew what it was like. Here the hot air took up the moisture from the swamps and rivers, and the sun could hardly get through the thick leaves of the forest. But out on the plains, where there werefew trees, the sun beat down with a fierce heat and the winds blew with a dry, hot fury that made every water pool precious to man and beast for miles around. Rivers that were deep and swift in the rainy season dried up completely in the dry season, and there were no villages on the wide table-lands, because there was no water there for months at a time. A few people wandered about who lived as they could by hunting, and the river villages, in which families lived in houses and kept goats, fowls, and cattle, had nothing to do with these wild savages.It was a drought such as the people of the plains knew in the dry season that the Alo Man meant when he began to tell the story of the Jackal and the Drought.I often remember [he said] the very dry time in the land when many animals died of thirst. It was in the days when the animals lived in villages and talked one with another, and when the drought was over the Lion called the animals together and said that some plan must be found to keep this from ever happening again.The Ape said that they might go to somecountry where there were no droughts, but the Tortoise said that he would never live to complete such a long journey.“Let us sleep through the next dry season,” said the Snake.“That would never suit me,” said the Hare.At last, after a great deal of discussion, the Jackal and the Hyena suggested that they might all join in digging a great pool to hold water through the next dry season.This seemed a wise plan, and on the very next day the animals came to dig the hole.They agreed to take turns. It was settled that as the Hyena and the Jackal had made the plan, the Hyena should be first and the Jackal last; but when the Jackal’s turn came he was nowhere to be found. The pool was almost finished, and the others decided to go on and get it done without him. Soon the rain began to fall, and filled it full of pure, sweet water. Then a rule was made that no one except those who had helped to dig the pool should be allowed to drink there.The Jackal was hiding in the bushes and heard all that was said, and he came very early the next morning and drank all that he wanted. Every morning, before any one else was abouthe did this, and after a while he grew bolder and took a swim in the pool, so that the water was muddy when the others came to drink.“Who did this?” asked the Lion.“Who did this?” asked the Leopard.“Who did this?” asked all the other animals when they came to drink.But no one knew.“I will tell you what we can do,” said the Tortoise. “Cover my shell with beeswax to make it sticky, and I will watch all night by the pool and catch the rascal.”jackal and tortoiseSo the shell of the Tortoise was covered with a thick coat of sticky wax, and he took his place beside the pool to watch for trespassers. He drew his head and his tail and his feet inside his shell, so that he looked like a flat brown stone. From time to time he would stick his head out cautiously to see if any one was coming. After waiting all night long, he heard a noise in the bushes. He crept down to the very edge of thewater, drew his head and feet into his shell, and kept as still as a stone.Then the Jackal came sneaking down to the pool, looking from side to side to make sure that no one was set to guard it.“What a very convenient stepping-stone,” he said, and he placed his two fore feet upon the Tortoise’s shell and bent down to drink. No sooner had he done this than he discovered, to his great surprise and terror, that his feet were stuck fast.“Ow! Ow! Let me go! This is a mean trick!” howled the Jackal.“You are not the only one who knows how to play tricks,” said the Tortoise, and he began to move away.“Yah! Yah! Let me go!” yelled the Jackal. “If you don’t let me go, I will kick your shell to pieces with my hind feet.”“You may do just as you please about that,” said the Tortoise, moving on away from the pool.The Jackal kicked as hard as he could at the Tortoise with his hind feet, and first one and then the other stuck fast to the shell.“Wow! Wow! Let me go!” squalled the Jackal. “If you don’t let me go, I will bite you in two!”“Try it and see what happens,” said the Tortoise quietly, moving on along the path.The Jackal bit the shell as hard as he could, and his jaws stuck to it fast. He was dragged along, until, after some time, the Tortoise arrived at the Lion’s house and told how he had caught the thieving Jackal.All the animals, when they heard the news, gathered to see the Jackal in his miserable captivity, but not one of them had any pity for him. Every one said that he ought to die for his dishonesty and his mischief-making.“You may live until tomorrow,” said the Lion, “and we will allow you this favor: you may choose the way you will die.”“Thank you,” said the Jackal, meekly. Then he began to think whether there was not some plan by which he might escape even now.All the animals came to see the Jackal executed, and the Hyena was made the executioner.“Have you made up your mind in what way you wish to be killed?” asked the Lion.“I once saw a monkey kill a rat,” said the Jackal, “by swinging it round by the tail and dashing it against a tree. I think I should prefer to be killed in that way.”“Very well,” said the Lion, “the Hyena willtake you by the tail and swing you round and round and dash you against a tree.”“Thank you,” said the Jackal, meekly. “If I might be so free as to make a suggestion, permit me to say that the other animals might be safer if they sat as far away as possible. Otherwise, when the Hyena lets go of me, I might hit one of them instead of the tree, and that would be very unfortunate.”The animals thought that this was a good suggestion, and went as far away as they could go without being out of sight of the execution.Now the Jackal had saved some fat from the meat they gave him for his dinner, and he had greased his tail all the way to the tip, so that it was as slippery as a lump of butter.The Hyena grasped the Jackal firmly by the tail and began to swing him round his head with all his might, but the harder he swung the more quickly the tail slipped out of his hand. In spite of all he could do, the Hyena could not keep hold of the slippery tail, and before he knew what had happened, the Jackal had landed on the ground and was running away through the forest for dear life. As for the Hyena, he lost his grip so suddenly that he was upset entirely, and sat down hard against a tree.And as for the other animals, they were so surprised that not one of them started to run after the Jackal until he was out of sight.The Jackal never came back to disturb the waters of the pool. A long time after every one who had helped to build it was dead, it was still known to all the animals of the forest, and it never was dry even in the hottest weather. But the Tortoises never forgot how the Jackal came to steal the water from the pool, and if you were to go there now you would probably find one of them on the bank, watching to see that no one troubles the waters.“Did you find that one there?” asked Mpoko.“Yes,” said the Alo Man, rubbing the last bit of red clay into some curious marks on the shell of the little tortoise he had been decorating. “I found him by a pool where all the animals drink, looking exactly like a little brown stone in the mud.”
rhino
Thereseemed to be no animal in the forest or the swamp or on the plain about which the Alo Man did not know a story. In the nine hundred thousand miles of country, more or less, through which the Congo and its branches flow, there is land suitable for almost every kind of wild creature known to Africa. Elephants, buffalo, wild cattle, rhinoceros, antelope, koodoo, eland, giraffes, pigs, and other grazing and browsing animals wander over the grassy table-lands. Hippopotami, crocodiles, and other water creatures live in the rivers and swamps, and among the beasts of prey are lions, leopards, hyenas, and jackals, although the jackal is not much to be feared. Monkeys large and smallare numerous in the forests, and in a part of the forest so old and deep that the people call it the Plantations of God, the gorilla is sometimes found. In the Alo Man’s stories, however, the smaller animals almost always had the best of it. They also had much more to say for themselves at night. As the old people put it, it is not always the biggest man whose words come in crowds.
“Do you know the reason why the hyena’s legs are not alike?” asked the Alo Man one night after supper, when there was a great to-do out in the darkness.
No one did, and of course every one wanted to hear the story of the Hyena and the Jackal.
I often recall [began the Alo Man] the days when the animals could talk and the Hyena and the Jackal lived in the same village. One day they were looking up at the clouds.
“They are very thick and white,” said the Jackal. “Can it be possible that they are solid white fat?”
The Jackal waited until one cloud floated quite near the earth, and then he climbed a tree and sprang into the very middle of that cloud.
jackal and hyena
[That the Jackal should climb a tree did not seem strange to any of the listeners when the Alo Man told the story; all of them had seen a man climb a palm tree for nuts by looping two ropes around the trunk and putting his feet in one and the other by turns, walking up the trunk to the very top.]
“I was right,” said the Jackal; “it is the most delicious white fat.”
Then he ate and ate, until he was so full that he was afraid to try to climb down the tree.
“I am coming down!” cried the Jackal to the Hyena. “Catch me as I fall, or I shall be hurt.”
The Hyena planted her feet firmly in the earth and arched her back, and when the Jackal jumped he landed on her back unhurt.
“Thank you,” said he, but he was not really grateful at all. He was already planning to play a joke on the Hyena.
“Climb up on the cloud and eat some of the good white fat,” said he. “It is the finest food I have ever eaten in my life.”
The Hyena was glad to hear that the Jackal had left some for her, and she climbed the tree and jumped out upon the cloud and began to eat. She ate and ate, as the Jackal had done,until she was so full that she did not dare to try to climb down the tree.
“I am coming down! Catch me!” she called to the Jackal, and he planted his four feet firmly in the ground and stood under the cloud. But as she jumped he stepped back, and down came the Hyena on her hind legs. So far and so hard did she fall that her hind legs were driven into her body, and have ever since been shorter than her fore legs, as you may see to this day.
But the Jackal’s turn came in time, for no dog is top dog in every fight. This is what happened to him.
One day the sun came down into the forest and sat down on the soft green earth, to rest. The Jackal came by and saw the sun resting there, and his eyes were dazzled so that he thought it was a goat. Now a goat would make him a fine dinner, so he pounced upon it quickly and put it in a sack and threw the sack over his shoulders to carry home.
He had not traveled far when the sun began to burn his shoulders.
“Oh! oh! oh!” cried the Jackal, trying to throw the sun off his shoulders. “Get down! get down!”
But the sun would not get down until he wasquite ready, and the Jackal’s back was scorched in a long black stripe which he wears to this day.
When the Hyena saw the long black stripe she howled with delight, and ever since then, when the Hyena and the Jackal meet and the Hyena sees the stripe on the Jackal’s back, the Hyena laughs and the Jackal yelps, just as you hear them doing now [concluded the Alo Man].
The Hyena and the Jackal were certainly making an uncommon racket even for them, and then, quite suddenly, they stopped.
“The Jackal must have been at his old tricks again,” said the Alo Man. “It sounds as if he still remembered what he did in the time of the great drought.”
“Tell about it,” begged the girls.
“Yes, tell about it; that is a good story,” said Mpoko. He had heard it before.
In this forest region the air was so hot and moist that such a thing as a drought was almost unknown, but the people all knew what it was like. Here the hot air took up the moisture from the swamps and rivers, and the sun could hardly get through the thick leaves of the forest. But out on the plains, where there werefew trees, the sun beat down with a fierce heat and the winds blew with a dry, hot fury that made every water pool precious to man and beast for miles around. Rivers that were deep and swift in the rainy season dried up completely in the dry season, and there were no villages on the wide table-lands, because there was no water there for months at a time. A few people wandered about who lived as they could by hunting, and the river villages, in which families lived in houses and kept goats, fowls, and cattle, had nothing to do with these wild savages.
It was a drought such as the people of the plains knew in the dry season that the Alo Man meant when he began to tell the story of the Jackal and the Drought.
I often remember [he said] the very dry time in the land when many animals died of thirst. It was in the days when the animals lived in villages and talked one with another, and when the drought was over the Lion called the animals together and said that some plan must be found to keep this from ever happening again.
The Ape said that they might go to somecountry where there were no droughts, but the Tortoise said that he would never live to complete such a long journey.
“Let us sleep through the next dry season,” said the Snake.
“That would never suit me,” said the Hare.
At last, after a great deal of discussion, the Jackal and the Hyena suggested that they might all join in digging a great pool to hold water through the next dry season.
This seemed a wise plan, and on the very next day the animals came to dig the hole.
They agreed to take turns. It was settled that as the Hyena and the Jackal had made the plan, the Hyena should be first and the Jackal last; but when the Jackal’s turn came he was nowhere to be found. The pool was almost finished, and the others decided to go on and get it done without him. Soon the rain began to fall, and filled it full of pure, sweet water. Then a rule was made that no one except those who had helped to dig the pool should be allowed to drink there.
The Jackal was hiding in the bushes and heard all that was said, and he came very early the next morning and drank all that he wanted. Every morning, before any one else was abouthe did this, and after a while he grew bolder and took a swim in the pool, so that the water was muddy when the others came to drink.
“Who did this?” asked the Lion.
“Who did this?” asked the Leopard.
“Who did this?” asked all the other animals when they came to drink.
But no one knew.
“I will tell you what we can do,” said the Tortoise. “Cover my shell with beeswax to make it sticky, and I will watch all night by the pool and catch the rascal.”
jackal and tortoise
So the shell of the Tortoise was covered with a thick coat of sticky wax, and he took his place beside the pool to watch for trespassers. He drew his head and his tail and his feet inside his shell, so that he looked like a flat brown stone. From time to time he would stick his head out cautiously to see if any one was coming. After waiting all night long, he heard a noise in the bushes. He crept down to the very edge of thewater, drew his head and feet into his shell, and kept as still as a stone.
Then the Jackal came sneaking down to the pool, looking from side to side to make sure that no one was set to guard it.
“What a very convenient stepping-stone,” he said, and he placed his two fore feet upon the Tortoise’s shell and bent down to drink. No sooner had he done this than he discovered, to his great surprise and terror, that his feet were stuck fast.
“Ow! Ow! Let me go! This is a mean trick!” howled the Jackal.
“You are not the only one who knows how to play tricks,” said the Tortoise, and he began to move away.
“Yah! Yah! Let me go!” yelled the Jackal. “If you don’t let me go, I will kick your shell to pieces with my hind feet.”
“You may do just as you please about that,” said the Tortoise, moving on away from the pool.
The Jackal kicked as hard as he could at the Tortoise with his hind feet, and first one and then the other stuck fast to the shell.
“Wow! Wow! Let me go!” squalled the Jackal. “If you don’t let me go, I will bite you in two!”
“Try it and see what happens,” said the Tortoise quietly, moving on along the path.
The Jackal bit the shell as hard as he could, and his jaws stuck to it fast. He was dragged along, until, after some time, the Tortoise arrived at the Lion’s house and told how he had caught the thieving Jackal.
All the animals, when they heard the news, gathered to see the Jackal in his miserable captivity, but not one of them had any pity for him. Every one said that he ought to die for his dishonesty and his mischief-making.
“You may live until tomorrow,” said the Lion, “and we will allow you this favor: you may choose the way you will die.”
“Thank you,” said the Jackal, meekly. Then he began to think whether there was not some plan by which he might escape even now.
All the animals came to see the Jackal executed, and the Hyena was made the executioner.
“Have you made up your mind in what way you wish to be killed?” asked the Lion.
“I once saw a monkey kill a rat,” said the Jackal, “by swinging it round by the tail and dashing it against a tree. I think I should prefer to be killed in that way.”
“Very well,” said the Lion, “the Hyena willtake you by the tail and swing you round and round and dash you against a tree.”
“Thank you,” said the Jackal, meekly. “If I might be so free as to make a suggestion, permit me to say that the other animals might be safer if they sat as far away as possible. Otherwise, when the Hyena lets go of me, I might hit one of them instead of the tree, and that would be very unfortunate.”
The animals thought that this was a good suggestion, and went as far away as they could go without being out of sight of the execution.
Now the Jackal had saved some fat from the meat they gave him for his dinner, and he had greased his tail all the way to the tip, so that it was as slippery as a lump of butter.
The Hyena grasped the Jackal firmly by the tail and began to swing him round his head with all his might, but the harder he swung the more quickly the tail slipped out of his hand. In spite of all he could do, the Hyena could not keep hold of the slippery tail, and before he knew what had happened, the Jackal had landed on the ground and was running away through the forest for dear life. As for the Hyena, he lost his grip so suddenly that he was upset entirely, and sat down hard against a tree.And as for the other animals, they were so surprised that not one of them started to run after the Jackal until he was out of sight.
The Jackal never came back to disturb the waters of the pool. A long time after every one who had helped to build it was dead, it was still known to all the animals of the forest, and it never was dry even in the hottest weather. But the Tortoises never forgot how the Jackal came to steal the water from the pool, and if you were to go there now you would probably find one of them on the bank, watching to see that no one troubles the waters.
“Did you find that one there?” asked Mpoko.
“Yes,” said the Alo Man, rubbing the last bit of red clay into some curious marks on the shell of the little tortoise he had been decorating. “I found him by a pool where all the animals drink, looking exactly like a little brown stone in the mud.”