He swam, and he swam, and it took him all day to swim over. Before he reached the other side, he was so tired he could only swim very slowly. Looking back, he saw all kinds of fishes on his tail. He shook them off, and at last he reached land.
“Now,” thought he, “I am really great, for I swam across that lake;” and he lay down for a good rest. When he got up he looked proudly back to see the wonderful lake, and there was no lake at all. What he had thought was a big lake was only a man’s footprint full of muddy water, that he had taken all day to cross, and the fishes he had seen on his tail were the little bugs swimming about in the mud-puddle.
“Now, I am surely ashamed of myself!” he cried. But he would not give up trying to be great, though he was beginning to see that he was really not as great as he supposed.
Far on the horizon, he saw something tall and slender.
“I must go cut down that pole that reaches from earth to sky,” said he, and off he started for the pole. When he reached it he walked all around the pole, looking up, but he could not see the top.
“That high pole holds up the sky,” thought he, “and if I cut it, the sky will fall down upon the earth, and everybody will be killed. I will cut that pole because I am ashamed of myself.”
First he dug a hole in the ground, to get into when the pole was cut. When the hole was finished he said, “I will do like this when the sky falls down,” and he ran as fast as he could into the hole. He came out then and started to cut the pole with his sharp little teeth.
He worked very hard, until at last the pole was cut, when he ran into the hole as fast as he could scamper, to listen for the falling of the pole.
Said the mouse to himself, “Now the sky has come down and killed every living thing.”
Pretty soon he began to wonder how it would look with the sky fallen down, and he peeped out of his hole; but everything seemed to be the same as before. He looked up where the sky used to be, and there it still was, all blue and shining. Then he looked down at the pole on the ground, and saw that it was only a tall blade of grass.