For a moment or two the pushmi-pullyu pawed the deck of the veranda with his dainty hoofs, as if wrapped in deep thought. Then, looking up with one of his heads, he began speaking in a quiet voice, while the other coughed apologetically below the level of the tea-table.
"Er—this isn't much of a story—not really. But perhaps it will serve to pass the time. I will tell you about the Badamoshi ostrich hunters. You must know, then, that the black peoples have various methods of hunting wild animals. And the way they go about it depends on the kind of animal they mean to hunt. For example, if they want giraffes they dig deep holes and cover them up with light boughs and grass. Next, they wait until the giraffe comes along and walks over the hole and falls in. Then they run up and catch him. For certain kinds of rather stupid deer they make a little screen of branches and leaves about the size of a man. And the hunter, holding the screen in front of him like a shield, creeps slowly forward until he is close to the deer and then fires his spear or arrow. Of course, the stupid deer thinks the moving leaves are just trees being swayed by the wind and takes very little notice, if the hunter is careful to approach quietly enough.
"They have various other dodges, more or less underhanded and deceitful, for getting game. But the one invented by the Badamoshi ostrich hunters was perhaps the meanest of them all. Briefly, this was it: Ostriches, you know, usually go about in small herds, like cattle. And they're rather stupid. You've heard the story about their sticking their heads in the sand when a man comes along, thinking that because they can't see the man, the man can't see them. That doesn't speak very well for their intelligence, does it? No. Very well then. Now, in the Badamoshi country there wasn't much sand for the ostriches to stick their heads in—which in a way was a good thing for them. Because there, when a man came along, they ran away instead—I suppose to look for sand. Anyhow, the running away saved their lives. So the hunters of Badamoshi had to think out some dodge of coming near enough to the ostriches to get among the herd and kill them. And the way they thought out was quite clever. As a matter of fact, I by chance came upon a group of these hunters in the woods one day, practising their new trick. They had the skin of an ostrich and were taking it in turns, putting it over their heads and trying to walk and look like a real ostrich, holding up the long neck with a stick. Keeping myself concealed, I watched them and saw at once what their game was. They meant to disguise themselves as ostriches and walk among the herd and kill them with axes which they kept hidden inside the skin.
"Now, the ostriches of those parts were great friends of mine—had been ever since they put the Badamoshis' tennis court out of business. The chief of the tribe some years before, finding a beautiful meadow of elephant grass—which happened to be my favorite grazing ground—had the fine hay all burnt off and made the place into a tennis court. He had seen white men playing that game and thought he'd like to play it, too. But the ostriches took the tennis balls for apples and ate them—you know, they're dreadfully unparticular about their food. Yes, they used to sneak around in the jungles on the edge of the tennis court and whenever a ball was knocked out of the court they'd run off with it and swallow it. By eating up all the chief's tennis balls in this way they put the tennis court out of business, and my beautiful grazing ground soon grew its long grass again and I came back to it. That is how the ostriches happened to be friends of mine.
"They'd run off with it and swallow it"
"So, seeing they were threatened by a secret danger, I went off and told the leader of the herd about it. He was frightfully stupid and I had the hardest work getting it into his head.