"Now we will make you large," said they. Then, "Will that do?"
"Yes," he answered; for he found that he was ten times the size of the largest.
"You need not go out," said the others. "We will bring you food into the lodge, and you will be our chief."
"Very well," Grasshopper answered. He thought, "I will stay here and grow fat at their expense."
But, soon after, one of them ran into the lodge out of breath, crying out:
"We are visited by the Indians!"
All huddled together in great fear. The water began to lower, for the hunters had broken down the dam, and soon they could be heard on the roof of the lodge, breaking it up. Out jumped all the beavers into the water, and so escaped.
Grasshopper tried to follow, then to call them back; but either they did not hear or would not attend to him. So he had to find his own way of getting out. Now, unfortunately, in order to gratify his ambition, the beavers had made him too large to crawl out of the hole. He wiggled and twisted in vain, and only worried himself till the sweat stood out on his forehead in knobs and huge bubbles. He looked like a great bladder swollen and blistered in the sun.
Although he heard and understood every word that the hunters spoke—and some of their expressions suggested terrible ideas—he could not turn himself back into a man. He had chosen to be a beaver, and a beaver he must he. One of the hunters, a prying little man with a single lock dangling over one eye, put his head in at the top of the lodge.
"Ty-au!" cried he. "Tut ty-au! Me-shau-mik—king of beavers is in."