“I will take you back to the shore,” said the turtle, “and then you can go and get your real eyes and come back again, for there are many more things for you to see here—things more wonderful and beautiful than anything I have yet shown you.”
Well, the rabbit was willing to do that, so he got upon the turtle’s back, and the turtle swam up and up with him through the sea.
As soon as they reached the shore the rabbit leaped from the turtle’s back, and away he went up the hill as fast as he could scamper, and he was glad enough to be out of that scrape, I can tell you. But the turtle waited, and he waited, and he waited, but the rabbit never did come back, and at last the turtle was obliged to go home without him.
As for the king of the fishes, if he ever got well, it was not the eye of a live rabbit that cured him; of that you may be sure.
MUDJEE MONEDO
AN AMERICAN INDIAN TALE
UPON the banks of the broad Ogechee River there once stood a little Indian village. The people who lived there were prosperous and happy. There were fish in the river and game in the forest, and no one lacked for anything.
But after a time a terrible misfortune fell upon the people. An ogre named Mudjee Monedo came to live near them. Upon an open plain he laid out a racecourse, and it was his amusement to challenge the young men of the village to race with him there. None dared to refuse, for the ogre was cruel and revengeful, and they feared what he might do to the old men and children if they should refuse; and yet to race with him meant death.
“Life against life,” the ogre would cry, laying his hand on the goal-post. “My life in wager against yours. This post is the goal, yonder charred stump the turning-point. The loser pays the forfeit with his life.”