The Honey-bird met him one day with cheer) 

 cheep-cheep, and as he whistled in reply it led him to 

 an old tree where the beehive was : it was a small 

 hive, and Jantje was hungry ; so he ate it all. All 

 the time he was eating, the bird kept fluttering about, 

 calling anxiously, and expecting some honey or fat 

 young bees to be thrown out for it ; and when he 

 had finished, the bird came down and searched in vain 

 for its share. As he walked away the guilty Jantje 

 noticed that the indignant bird followed him with 

 angry cries and threats. 



All day long he failed to find game ; whenever 

 there seemed to be a chance an angry honey-bird 

 would appear ahead of him and cry a warning to the 

 game ; and that night as he came back, empty-handed 

 and hungry, all the portents of bad luck came to him 

 in turn. An owl screeched three times over his head ; 

 a goat-sucker with its long wavy wings and tail 

 flitted before him in swoops and rings in most ghostly 

 silence and there is nothing more ghostly than that 

 flappy wavy soundless flitting of the goat-sucker ; a 

 jackal trotted persistently in front looking back at 

 him ; and a striped hyena, humpbacked, savage, and 

 solitary, stalked by in silence, and glared. 



At night as he lay unable to sleep the bats came 

 and made faces at him ; a night adder rose up before 

 his face and slithered out its forked tongue the two 

 black beady eyes glinting the firelight back ; and which- 

 ever way he looked there was a honey-bird, silent 

 and angry, yet with a look of satisfaction, as it watched. 

 So it went all night : no sleep for him ; no rest ! 

 347 



