And now it came, at last, to the pushmi-pullyu's turn for a story. He was very shy and modest and when the animals asked him the following night he said in his very well-bred manner:
"I'm terribly sorry to disappoint you, but I'm afraid I don't know any stories—at least none good enough to entertain you with."
"Oh, come on, Push," said Jip. "Don't be so bashful. We've all told one. You don't mean to say you've lived all your life in the African jungle without seeing any adventures? There must be lots of you could tell us."
"But I've mostly led such a quiet life, you see," said the pushmi-pullyu. "Our people have always kept very much to themselves. We mind our own business and don't like getting mixed up in scandals and rows and adventures."
"Oh, but just think a minute," said Dab-Dab. "Something will come to you.... Don't him," she whispered to the others. "Just leave him alone and let him think—he's got two heads to think with, you know. Something will come to him. But don't get him embarrassed, whatever you do."
For a moment or two the pushmi-pullyu pawed the deck of the with his dainty , as if wrapped in deep thought. Then, looking up with one of his heads, he began speaking in a quiet voice, while the other coughed apologetically below the level of the tea-table.
"Er—this isn't much of a story—not really. But perhaps it will serve to pass the time. I will tell you about the Badamoshi hunters. You must know, then, that the black peoples have various methods of hunting wild animals. And the way they go about it depends on the kind of animal they mean to hunt. For example, if they want giraffes they dig deep holes and cover them up with light and grass. Next, they wait until the giraffe comes along and walks over the hole and falls in. Then they run up and catch him. For certain kinds of rather stupid deer they make a little screen of branches and leaves about the size of a man. And the hunter, holding the screen in front of him like a shield, creeps slowly forward until he is close to the deer and then fires his spear or arrow. Of course, the stupid deer thinks the moving leaves are just trees being swayed by the wind and takes very little notice, if the hunter is careful to approach quietly enough.
"They have various other , more or less underhanded and deceitful, for getting game. But the one invented by the Badamoshi ostrich hunters was perhaps the meanest of them all. , this was it: , you know, usually go about in small , like cattle. And they're rather stupid. You've heard the story about their sticking their heads in the sand when a man comes along, thinking that because they can't see the man, the man can't see them. That doesn't speak very well for their intelligence, does it? No. Very well then. Now, in the Badamoshi country there wasn't much sand for the ostriches to stick their heads in—which in a way was a good thing for them. Because there, when a man came along, they ran away instead—I suppose to look for sand. Anyhow, the running away saved their lives. So the hunters of Badamoshi had to think out some of coming near enough to the ostriches to get among the and kill them. And the way they thought out was quite clever. As a matter of fact, I by chance came upon a group of these hunters in the woods one day, practising their new trick. They had the skin of an ostrich and were taking it in turns, putting it over their heads and trying to walk and look like a real ostrich, holding up the long neck with a stick. Keeping myself , I watched them and saw at once what their game was. They meant to disguise themselves as ostriches and walk among the herd and kill them with axes which they kept hidden inside the skin.
"Now, the ostriches of those parts were great friends of mine—had been ever since they put the Badamoshis' tennis court out of business. The chief of the tribe some years before, finding a beautiful meadow of elephant grass—which happened to be my favorite grazing ground—had the fine hay all burnt off and made the place into a tennis court. He had seen white men playing that game and thought he'd like to play it, too. But the ostriches took the tennis balls for apples and ate them—you know, they're dreadfully unparticular about their food. Yes, they used to around in the jungles on the edge of the tennis court and whenever a ball was knocked out of the court they'd run off with it and swallow it. By eating up all the chief's tennis balls in this way they put the tennis court out of business, and my beautiful grazing ground soon grew its long grass again and I came back to it. That is how the ostriches happened to be friends of mine.
"So, seeing they were threatened by a secret danger, I went off and told the leader of the herd about it. He was frightfully stupid and I had the hardest work getting it into his head.
"'Now, remember,' I said as I was leaving, 'you can easily tell the hunter when he comes among your herd from the color and shape of his legs. Ostriches' legs are a sort of gray—as you see from your own—and the hunters' legs are black and thicker.' You see, the skin which the Badamoshis were going to use did not cover the hunters' legs. 'Now,' I said, 'you must tell all your birds when they see a black-legged ostrich trying to make friends with them to set on him and give him a good hiding. That will teach the Badamoshi hunters a lesson.'
"Well, you'd think after that everything should have gone . But I had not counted on the extraordinary stupidity of ostriches. The leader, going home that night, stepped into some , places and got his stupid long legs all over black mud—caked with it, thick. Then before he went to bed he gave all the ostriches the careful instructions which I had given to him.
"The next morning he was late in getting up and the herd was out ahead of him, feeding in a pleasant place on the hillside. Then that numbskull of a leader—the stupidest cock ostrich of them all—without bothering to brush the black mud off his legs which he had stepped into the night before, comes stalking out into the open space like a king, expecting a grand reception. And he got a grand reception, too—the ignoramus! As soon as the others saw his black legs they passed the word around quickly and at a given signal they set on the poor leader and nearly beat the life out of him. The Badamoshis, who had not yet appeared at all, arrived upon the scene at this moment. And the silly ostriches were so busy beating their leader, whom they took for a hunter in disguise, that the black men came right up to them and would have caught the whole lot if I hadn't shouted in time to warn them of their danger.
"So, after that, of course, I saw that if I wanted to save my good but foolish friends from destruction, I had better do something on my own account.
"And this was what I thought I'd do: When the Badamoshi hunters were asleep I would go and take that ostrich skin—the only one they had—away from them and that would be the end of their grand new hunting trick.
"So in the dead of night I crept out of the jungle and came to the place where the hunters' huts were. I had to come up from the side, because I ............