THE JACKAL AND HIS TRACKS
[Illustration]
There seemed 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 small are 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.
[Illustration]
[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 was quite 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 were few 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 some country 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 about he 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.”
[Illustration]
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 the water, 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 will take 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.”