COUSIN JACK 183 



tiger to kill a black buck. Then he tells the t : ger 

 that the mouse has threatened to kill him. The tiger, 

 much insulted, starts off in pursuit of the mouse 

 In the meantime the mouse comes for his share. 

 The jackal tells him that the mongoose has bitten 

 the flesh, and that, imbued as that animal is with 

 snake poison, it would be dangerous to touch it. 

 The mouse therefore goes off. Then the wolf 

 appears, but, as in the fox fables, he is both stupid 

 and cowardly. He believes the jackal at once when 

 the latter tells him that the tiger means to kill him, 

 and runs away. There is only the mongoose, and 

 the jackal simply bluffs him by saying that he has 

 killed the other three animals. Whereupon the 

 mongoose too departs, and the jackal eats the whole 

 antelope. 



There are, in Sanskrit, two interesting variants of 

 the story of the fox which reveals its nature by a 

 sudden impulse to catch a beetle. In the first the 

 jackal, having fallen into some dye-pots, comes out 

 in such gorgeous tints that the other animals, struck 

 by his magnificence, unanimously elect him king. 

 For a time all goes well, until one night he hears the 

 other jackals howling, and, unable to restrain himself, 

 he joins in. His true nature is thus discovered, and 

 he is torn to pieces by the lion as a usurper. The 



