When the morning came, the tortoise called his wife to help him, and together they put the meat and rubber into a basket with the hare on top, and carried them all to the king’s house.
When the drum was beaten, the people assembled as usual, and discussed amongst themselves to whom the meat of the tortoise should be given when he was killed. In the middle of the discussion, the tortoise appeared carrying the meat with the hare on top.
The tortoise then charged the hare with attempting to steal the king’s meat, and told the people of the trap he had set. The hare was found guilty, and was ordered to pay a large number of brass rods, and he was told that if they were not forthcoming, he would be killed, and that his mother and sister would be killed with him, as he had been the cause of the death of so many animals.
The hare begged for a little time to enable him to get the rods, which was allowed to him.
He then ran home and got his mother and sister to come with him at once to the foot of a big cotton tree, and, having got a rope round the lowest branch, he very soon got to the top of the tree, where he built a small hut for himself and his people.
The hare then went down to the lowest branch where the rope was, and hauled his mother and sister up. He put them in the hut at the top of the tree, and sat down himself next to the rope with a sharp knife in his hand.
As the hare did not appear at the appointed time to pay the rods, the people went to his house, and found that they had all disappeared. It did not take long, however, to discover that he had taken refuge in the cotton tree, so they all went there and found the rope hanging down.
Then they all began to climb the rope together, leaving the tortoise on the ground, and just as he was about to commence to climb, the others having already reached halfway, the hare cut the rope with one cut of his sharp knife, and all the animals fell down upon the tortoise, smashing his smooth shell into small pieces, and hurting themselves very much. No one was killed, however, and they limped home one after the other.
On the way they passed the tortoise’s house, so they told Mrs. Tortoise that they had fallen on her husband from a great height, and that his shell was broken into pieces.
On hearing this the mammie tortoise got her basket and went off to the cotton tree. Having picked up all the pieces of her husband’s shell, and having placed them in the basket, she lifted the tortoise and carried them all home.