Читать книгу Two-Legs - Ewald Carl - Страница 4
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ОглавлениеIt was once upon a time, many, many, many years ago.
And it was in the warm lands where the sun shines stronger than here and the rain falls closer and all animals and plants thrive better, because the winter does not stunt their growth.
The forest was full of life and noise.
The flies buzzed, the sparrow ate the flies and the hawk ate the sparrow. The bees crept into the flowers in search of honey, the lion roared and the birds sang, the brook rippled and the grass grew. The trees stood and rustled, while their roots sucked sap from the earth. The flowers were radiant and fragrant.
All at once, it became strangely still.
It was as though everything held its breath and listened and stared. The rustling of the trees ceased. The violet woke from her dreams and looked up in wonder. The lion raised his head and stood with one paw uplifted. The stag stopped grazing, the eagle rested high in the air on his wings, the little mouse ran out of his hole and pricked up his ears.
There came two through the forest who were different from the others and whom no one had ever seen before.
They walked erect. Their foreheads were high, their eyes firm and steady. They went hand in hand and looked around them as though they did not know where they were.
“Who, in the name of wonder, are these?” asked the lion.
“They’re animals,” said the stag. “They can walk. But how oddly they do it! Why don’t they leap on all fours, seeing that they have four legs? Then they would get along much faster.”
“Oh,” said the snake, “I have no legs at all and it seems to me I get along pretty fast!’
“I don’t believe they are animals,” said the nightingale. “They have no feathers and no hair, except that bit on their heads.”
“Scales would do quite as well,” said the pike, popping his head out of the river.
“Some of us have to manage with our bare skin,” said the earth-worm, quietly.
“They have no tails,” said the mouse. “Never in their lives have they been animals!”
“I have no tail,” said the toad. “And nobody can deny that I am an animal.”
“Look!” said the lion. “Just look! One of them is taking up a stone in his fore-paws: I couldn’t do that.”
“But I could,” said the orang-outang. “There’s nothing in that. For the rest, I can satisfy your curiosity. Those two, in point of fact, are animals. They are husband and wife, their name is Two-Legs and they are distant relations of my own.”
“Oh, really?” said the lion. “Then how is it they have no fur?”
“I daresay they’ve lost it,” said the orang-outang.
“Why don’t you go and talk to them?” asked the lion.
THERE CAME TWO THROUGH THE FOREST
“I don’t know them,” replied the orang-outang. “And I’m not at all anxious to have anything to do with them. I have only heard of them. You must know, they are a sort of very inferior, second-rate ape. I shall be pleased to give them an apple or an orange now and again, but I won’t undertake the smallest responsibility for them.”
“They look very nice,” said the lion. “I shouldn’t mind trying what they taste like.”
“Pray do, for all that I care,” said the orang-outang. “They will never be a credit to the family and, sooner or later, they will come to a bad end.”
The lion went towards them, as they came, but, when he stood before them, he suddenly lost courage. He could not understand this himself, for there was not another thing in the forest that he feared. But the two new animals had such strange eyes and walked the earth so fearlessly that he thought they must possess some mysterious power which he could not see. There was nothing particular about their teeth; and their claws were not worth speaking of. But something about them there must be.
So he hung his head and moved out of their way.
“Why didn’t you eat them?” asked the lioness.
“I wasn’t feeling hungry,” he answered.
He lay down to rest in the high grass and did as though he were no longer thinking of them. The other animals did the same, for he was their chief. But none of them meant it. They were all taken up with the new animals.
