The shout echoed through the wildness of the wilderness, and the echo came back to Gud; and Gud thought it was a lion's roar.
The mad Underdog also heard Gud's shout and the echo of Gud's shout, and he thought the shout was the blast of a war trumpet, and that the echo was the noise of the celebration of peace.
But Gud did not know what Fidu thought, for Gud was mad. If Gud could only have looked sanely into Fidu's insane eyes, a deal of trouble might have been avoided. But he could not; and Gud thought the echo of his shout was the roar of a mighty, wicked lion, and he thought Fidu thought so, too. And maybe he did.
Then the lion's roar roared again. But Gud was not afraid, for he had no reason to be afraid. Filled with unreasonable faith and valor, Gud seized his staff and charged into the jungle after the lion's roar. And Fidu, the Underdog, followed after Gud, for why shouldn't a mad dog follow a mad master?
The lion's roar roared yet again. The hair on the mad Underdog's back bristled. The dark, dank jungle trembled with the lion's roar. The monkeys in the tree tops chattered with excitement, for it looked to them as if there was going to be a fight.
Gud charged through the underbrush brandishing his staff and came face to face with the lion's roar. And Gud struck viciously and valorously at the lion's roar. But it was only the illusion of a lion's roar and Gud's staff went through the incorporeal stuff like a whip lash through mercy.
Then the lion's roar roared once again, and this time so mightily that Gud died of fright.
When the Underdog came upon the scene, the roar, ashamed of its unreality, had slunk off into the wilderness, and all was quiet in the gloom and the shadow of death.
Fidu sniffed pathetically at his dead master, and then, filled with remorse, he whined piteously, for now that his master was dead the poor mad dog regretted that he had lost Gud's reason.
For a long time Fidu sat in silent vigil by his dead master's side, grieving as hard as a poor mad dog could. But at last he arose and licked the right hand of Gud, which he had bitten in his madness, and gazed again into his dead master's face.