She replied, ‘Yes, father, it is quite true. I saw it with my own eyes.’
The father did not know what to think, and told one of his friends, who said, ‘To-morrow we had better keep watch ourselves.’
And the next day they hid themselves and waited till the little hare came out of the royal hut. He walked gaily towards the enclosure, threw off, Big Lion’s skin, and sang and danced as before—
I am just the little hare, the little hare, the little hare, I am just the little hare, who killed the great hyaenas.
That night the two hyaenas told all the rest, saying, ‘Do you know that we have allowed ourselves to be trampled on by a wretched creature with nothing of the lion about him but his skin?’
When supper was being cooked that evening, before they all went to bed, the little hare, looking fierce and terrible in Big Lion’s skin, said as usual to one of the hyaenas ‘Go and get into the boiling water.’ But the hyaena never stirred. There was silence for a moment; then a hyaena took a stone, and flung it with all his force against the lion’s skin. The little hare jumped out through the mouth with a single spring, and fled away like lightning, all the hyaenas in full pursuit uttering great cries. As he turned a corner the little hare cut off both his ears, so that they should not know him, and pretended to be working at a grindstone which lay there.
The hyaenas soon came up to him and said, ‘Tell me, friend, have you seen the little hare go by?’
‘No, I have seen no one.’
‘Where can he be?’ said the hyaenas one to another. ‘Of course, this creature is quite different, and not at all like the little hare.’ Then they went on their way, but, finding no traces of the little hare, they returned sadly to their village, saying, ‘To think we should have allowed ourselves to be swept away by a wretched creature like that!’