"Run! run!" panted the tiger, "there's the very devil of a horseman in yonder fields, who thinks nothing of eating three tigers for breakfast!"
At this the jackal sniggered in his sleeve. "My dear lord," said he, "the sun has dazzled your eyes! That was no horseman, but only the farmer's wife dressed up as a man!"
"Are you quite sure?" asked the tiger, pausing.
"Quite sure, my lord," repeated the jackal, "and if your lordship's eyes had not been dazzled by--ahem!--the sun, your lordship would have seen her pigtail hanging down behind."
"But you may be mistaken!" persisted the cowardly tiger, "it was the very devil of a horseman to look at!"
"Who's afraid?" replied the brave jackal. "Come! don't give up your dinner because of a woman!"
"But you may be bribed to betray me!" argued the tiger, who, like all cowards, was suspicious.
"Let us go together, then!" returned the gallant jackal.
"Nay! but you may take me there and then run away!" insisted the tiger cunningly.
"In that case, let us tie our tails together, and then I can't!" The jackal, you see, was determined not to be done out of his bones.
To this the tiger agreed, and having tied their tails together in a reef-knot, the pair set off arm-in-arm.
Now the farmer and his wife had remained in the field, laughing over the trick she had played on the tiger, when, lo and behold! what should they see but the gallant pair coming back ever so bravely, with their tails tied together.
"Run!" cried the farmer, "we are lost! we are lost!"
"Nothing of the kind, you great fool!" answered his wife coolly, "if you will only stop that noise and be quiet. I can't hear myself speak!"
Then she waited till the pair were within hail, when she called out politely, "How very kind of you, dear Mr. Jackal, to bring me such a nice fat tiger! I shan't be a moment finishing my share of him, and then you can have the bones."
At these words the tiger became wild with fright, and, quite forgetting the jackal, and that reef-knot in their tails, he bolted away full tilt, dragging the jackal behind him. Bumpety, bump, bump, over the stones!--crash, scratch, patch, through the briars!
In vain the poor jackal howled and shrieked to the tiger to stop,--the noise behind him only frightened the coward more; and away he went, helter-skelter, hurry-scurry, over hill and dale, till he was nearly dead with fatigue, and the jackal was quite dead from bumps and bruises. |
