“The Fox then said to the Snake: ‘You are entirely in the wrong, for your friend did a kindness to you in helping you in your trouble, but you want to repay him by a bad deed--you want to swallow him.’
“Thereupon they all went away, leaving the Snake under the tree, as no one would help him again for fear of his ingratitude.
“The Frog thanked the Fox for saving him, and gave him his load of peanuts, and they became great friends.”
At the close of this story no one had a word to say in defence of the Snake’s ingratitude. All thought he was rightly punished in being left beneath the tree to starve to death, and Bakula remarked that: “Ingratitude is a crime so black that no one ever owned to being guilty of it, and everybody is ready to condemn it in others.”
This story had so swept sleep from their eyes that they begged Bakula to tell them another of his stories; but he said he could not recall any more stories that night; and then another lad volunteered, and, with much laughter, told the following story of the trick a jocular boy played on two friends. I call this--
“Inquiry should come before Anger.”
“Once upon a time a Wine-gatherer and a Fisherman became great friends; they ate together, walked and talked together, and went to work together; and when one went to collect wine from his palm-trees the other would look after his fish-traps in the streams and pools near to the palm-trees; and after their work was finished they would meet in the booth to drink the wine and cook and eat the fish together.
“One day, while thus eating and drinking, the Wine-gatherer said: ‘There is no one who can break the strong friendship that exists between us two,’ and the Fisherman assented, saying: ‘Why, if you had not mentioned it, I was going to remark that no one can separate us one from the other.’
“A frolicsome boy heard them make this covenant of friendship, and laughingly said to himself: ‘When they go away I will do that which will test their friendship for each other.’
“In a short time the two friends returned together to their town, and when they had gone the boy took the hoop and climbed up the palm-trees, and removed all the small calabashes that were placed there to catch the palm-wine, and then he went to the pools and streams and gathered all the fish-traps, and put the calabashes in their place, and the fish-traps he tied to the palm-trees. Having thus changed them he returned to his town.