The Hyena and the Jackal were certainly making an uncommon racket even for them, and then, quite suddenly, they stopped.
“The Jackal must have been at his old tricks again,” said the Alo Man. “It sounds as if he still remembered what he did in the time of the great drought.”
“Tell about it,” begged the girls.
“Yes, tell about it; that is a good story,” said Mpoko. He had heard it before.
In this forest region the air was so hot and moist that such a thing as a drought was almost unknown, but the people all knew what it was like. Here the hot air took up the moisture from the swamps and rivers, and the sun could hardly get through the thick leaves of the forest. But out on the plains, where there were few trees, the sun beat down with a fierce heat and the winds blew with a dry, hot fury that made every water pool precious to man and beast for miles around. Rivers that were deep and swift in the rainy season dried up completely in the dry season, and there were no villages on the wide table-lands, because there was no water there for months at a time. A few people wandered about who lived as they could by hunting, and the river villages, in which families lived in houses and kept goats, fowls, and cattle, had nothing to do with these wild savages.
It was a drought such as the people of the plains knew in the dry season that the Alo Man meant when he began to tell the story of the Jackal and the Drought.
I often remember [he said] the very dry time in the land when many animals died of thirst. It was in the days when the animals lived in villages and talked one with another, and when the drought was over the Lion called the animals together and said that some plan must be found to keep this from ever happening again.
The Ape said that they might go to some country where there were no droughts, but the Tortoise said that he would never live to complete such a long journey.