Part 6

By this time it was raining hard. The little bee felt her wings and fur getting wetter and wetter; and she was so cold and sleepy she did not know what to do. She crawled along as fast as she could over the ground, hoping to come to some place where it was dry and not so cold. At last she came to a tree and began to walk up the trunk. Suddenly, just as she had come to the crotch of two branches, she fell! She fell a long, long distance and landed finally on something soft. There was no wind and no rain blowing. On coming to her wits the little bee understood that she had fallen down through a hole inside a hollow tree.

And now the little bee had the fright of her life. Coiled up near her there was a snake, a green snake with a brick-colored back. That hollow tree was the snake's house; and the snake lay there looking at her with eyes that shone even in that darkness. Now, snakes eat bees, and like them. So when this little bee found herself so close to a fearful enemy of her kind, she just closed her eyes and murmured to herself:

"This is the last of me! Oh, how I wish I had worked!"

To her great surprise, however, the snake not only did not eat her, but spoke to her rather softly for such a terrible snake:

"How do you do, little bee? You must be a naughty little bee, to be out so late at night!"

"Yes," she murmured, her heart in her throat. "I have been a naughty bee. I did not work, and they won't let me in to go to my bed!"

"In that case, I shall not be so sorry to eat you!" answered the snake. "Surely there can be no harm at all in depriving the world of a useless little bee like you! I won't have to go out for dinner tonight. I shall eat you right here!"

The little bee was about as scared as a bee can be.

"That is not fair," she said. "It is not just! You have no right to eat me just because you are bigger than I am. Go and ask people if that isn't so! People know what is right and wrong!"

"Ah, ah!" said the snake, lifting his head higher, "so you have a good opinion of men? So you think that the men who steal your honey are more honest than snakes who eat you? You are not only a lazy bee. You are also a silly one!"

"It is not because men are dishonest that they take our honey," said the bee.

"Why is it then?" said the snake.

"It's because they are more intelligent than we are!" That is what the bee said; but the snake just laughed; and then he hissed:

"Well, if you must have it that way, it's because I'm more intelligent than you that I'm going to eat you now! Get ready to be eaten, lazy bee!"

And the snake drew back to strike, and lap up the bee at one gobble.

But the little bee had time to say:

"It's because you're duller than I am that you eat me!"

"Duller than you?" asked the snake, letting his head down again. "How is that, stupid?"

"However it is, it's so!"

"I'll have to be shown!" said the snake. "I will make a bargain with you. We will each do a trick; and the cleverest trick wins. If I win, I'll eat you!"

"And if I win?" asked the little bee.

"If you win," said the snake after some thought, "you may stay in here where it is warm all night. Is it a bargain?"

"It is," said the bee.

The snake considered another moment or so and then began to laugh. He had thought of something a bee could not possibly do. He darted out of a hole in the tree so quickly the bee had scarcely time to wonder what he was up to; and just as quickly he came back with a seed pod from the eucalyptus tree that stood near the beehive and shaded it on days when the sun was hot. Now the seed pods of the eucalyptus tree are just the shape of a top; in fact, the boys and girls in Argentina call them "tops"--_trompitos!_

"Now you just watch and see what I'm a-going to do," said the snake. "Watch now! Watch!..."

The snake wound the thin part of his tail around the top like a string; then, with a jump forward to his full length, he straightened his tail out. The "top" began to spin like mad on the bark floor there at the bottom of the hollow tree; and it spun and spun and spun, dancing, jumping, running off in this direction and then in that direction. And the snake laughed! And he laughed and he laughed and he laughed! No bee would ever be able to do a thing like that!

Finally the top got tired of spinning and fell over on its side.

"That is very clever!" said the bee, "I could never do that!"

"In that case, I shall have to eat you!" said the snake.

"Not just yet, please," said the bee. "I can't spin a top; but I can do something no one else can do!"

"What is that?" asked the snake.

"I can disappear!" said the bee.

"What do you mean, disappear?" said the snake, with some interest. "Disappear so that I can't see you and without going away from here?"

"Without going away from here!"

"Without hiding in the ground?"

"Without hiding in the ground!"

"I give up!" said the snake. "Disappear! But if you don't do as you say, I eat you, gobble, gobble, just like that!"

Now you must know that while the top was spinning round and round, the little bee had noticed something on the floor of the hollow tree she had not seen before: it was a little shrub, three or four inches high, with leaves about the size of a fifty-cent piece. She now walked over to the stem of this little shrub, taking care, however, not to touch it with her body. Then she said:

"Now it is my turn, Mr. Snake. Won't you be so kind as to turn around, and count 'one,' 'two,' 'three.' At the word 'three,' you can look for me everywhere! I simply won't be around!"

The snake looked the other way and ran off a "onetathree," then turning around with his mouth wide open to have his dinner at last. You see, he counted so fast just to give the bee as little time as possible, under the contract they had made.

But if he opened his mouth wide for his dinner, he held it open in complete surprise. There was no bee to be found anywhere! He looked on the floor. He looked on the sides of the hollow tree. He looked in each nook and cranny. He looked the little shrub all over. Nothing! The bee had simply disappeared!

Now, the snake understood that if his trick of spinning the top with his tail was extraordinary, this trick of the bee was almost miraculous. Where had that good-for-nothing lazybones gone to? Here? No! There? No! Where then? Nowhere! There was no way to find the little bee!

"Well," said the snake at last, "I give up! Where are you?"

A little voice seemed to come from a long way off, but still from the middle of the space inside the hollow tree.

"You won't eat me if I reappear?" it said.

"No, I won't eat you!" said the snake.

"Promise?"

"I promise! But where are you?"

"Here I am," said the bee, coming out on one of the leaves of the little shrub.

It was not such a great mystery after all. That shrub was a Sensitive-plant, a plant that is very common in South America, especially in the North of the Republic of Argentina, where Sensitive-plants grow to quite a good size. The peculiarity of the Sensitive-plant is that it shrivels up its leaves at the slightest contact. The leaves of this shrub were unusually large, as is true of the Sensitive-plants around the city of Misiones. You see, the moment the bee lighted on a leaf, it folded up tight about her, hiding her completely from view. Now, the snake had been living next to that plant all the season long, and had never noticed anything unusual about it. The little bee had paid attention to such things, however; and her knowledge this time had saved her life.

The snake was very much ashamed at being bested by such a little bee; and he was not very nice about it either. So much so, in fact, that the bee spent most of the night reminding him of the promise he had made not to eat her.

And it was a long, endless night for the little bee. She sat on the floor in one corner and the snake coiled up in the other corner opposite. Pretty soon it began to rain so hard that the water came pouring in through the hole at the top of the tree and made quite a puddle on the floor. The bee sat there and shivered and shivered; and every so often the snake would raise his head as though to swallow her at one gulp. "You promised! You promised! You promised!" And the snake would lower his head, sheepishlike, because he did not want the bee to think him a dishonest, as well as a stupid snake.

The little bee, who had been used to a warm hive at home and to warm sunlight out of doors, had never dreamed there could be so much cold anywhere as there was in that hollow tree. Nor had there ever been a night so long!

But the moment there was a trace of daylight at the hole in the top of the tree, the bee bade the snake good-by and crawled out. She tried her wings; and this time they worked all right. She flew in a bee-line straight for the door of the hive.

The policemen were standing there and she began to cry. But they simply stepped aside without saying a word, and let her in. They understood, you see, as wise old bees, that this wayward child was not the lazy bee they had driven away the evening before, but a sadder and wiser child who now knew something about the world she had to live in.

And they were right. Never before was there such a bee for working from morning till night, day in, day out, gathering pollen and honey from the flowers. When Autumn came she was the most respected bee in the hive and she was appointed teacher of the young bees who would do the work the following year. And her first lesson was something like this:

"It is not because bees are intelligent but because they work that makes them such wonderful little things. I used my intelligence only once--and that was to save my life. I should not have gotten into that trouble, however, if I had worked, like all the other bees. I used to waste my strength just flying around doing nothing. I should not have been any more tired if I had worked. What I needed was a sense of duty; and I got it that night I spent with the snake in the hollow tree.

"Work, my little bees, work!--remembering that what we are all working for, the happiness of everybody, will be hard enough to get if each of us does his full duty. This is what people say, and it is just as true of bees. Work well and faithfully and you will be happy. There is no sounder philosophy for a man or for a bee!"

THE GIANT TORTOISE'S GOLDEN RULE

Once there was a man who lived in Buenos Aires and was a friend of the superintendent of the Zoo. This man had a very happy life, because he worked hard and enjoyed good health. But one day he fell ill, and the doctors told him he would never get well unless he left town and went to live in the country where there was good air and a warm climate. The man could not think of such a thing, however. He had five little brothers, and both his parents were dead. He had to provide the little boys with food and clothes, and get them ready for school in the morning. Who would care for them, if he went away? So he kept on with his work and his illness grew worse and worse.

One day a man from the Zoo met him on the street and said:

"You ought to go and live an out-of-door life for a while. Now, I have an idea. We need a collection of new specimens for our museum, and you are a good shot with a gun. Wouldn't you like to go up into the Andes and hunt for us? I will pay for your outfit, and get a woman to look after your little brothers. It will not cost you very much, and there will be plenty of money left for the boys."

The sick man gladly accepted. He went off to the mountains, many, many miles beyond Misiones, where he camped in the open air and soon began to get better.

He lived quite by himself, doing his own cooking, washing his own clothes, and making his own bed, which was a bag with blankets in it. He did not use a tent, but slept in the bag out under the stars. When it rained he would throw up a shelter of branches, cover it with his waterproof, and sit down all cozy underneath, till the storm cleared. He ate partridges and venison, with the berries and wild fruits he found along the mountains. Whenever he saw some rare animal that the Zoo would want, he shot it, and dried its skin in the sun. In course of time, he made a big bundle of such skins, which he carried on his shoulder whenever he moved his camp to a new place. Many beautifully spotted snakes he was able to catch alive; and these he kept in a big hollow gourd--for in South America wild squashes and pumpkins grow till they are as large as gasoline cans.

All this was very hard work but the man grew strong and healthy again. And what an appetite he had when supper time came around! One day when his provisions were getting low, he went out hunting with his gun. Soon he came to a wide lake, and what should he see on the shore but a huge panther that had caught a tortoise! The fierce animal had drawn the turtle up out of the water and was clawing between the two shells trying to scratch the meat out. As the man approached, the panther turned and, with a great roar, leaped toward him. The panther was not quick enough, however, for a bullet from the man's rifle caught him between the eyes and laid him low in his tracks.

"What a wonderful rug this skin will make for somebody!" the man exclaimed; and he carefully removed the hide and rolled it up to take home.

"I think I will have turtle soup for supper tonight," the man continued as he turned toward the tortoise; for turtle-flesh is one of the richest and sweetest of all meats.

But he could not help feeling very sorry for the poor turtle when he saw what a plight she was in. The panther's claws had torn the flesh terribly; and a great gash in her throat had all but left her head severed from the rest of the body. Instead of killing the wounded turtle the hunter thought he would try to cure her of her hurts.

[Illustration: "He could not help feeling sorry for the poor turtle...."]

The camp was some distance away and the man was very tired. Besides, when he tried to lift the tortoise, he found she weighed nearly two hundred pounds. Finally he put a rope around her, and pulled and hauled till he dragged her along over the grass back to the camp.

The man had no extra pieces of cloth to make a bandage with, so he cut off a piece of his shirt and took the lining out of his coat. Finally he managed to bind up the tortoise's throat and stop the bleeding. Then he pushed her into a corner of the shelter, where she lay motionless for days and days. Twice a day the man would come and wash the wound with water and liniment. When he thought the cut had healed, he took off the wrapping and the tortoise drew her head into her shell. The man kept visiting her every morning, however, tapping gently on the turtle's back to wake her up.

The tortoise got entirely well; but then something terrible happened. The man caught a fever in the swamps around the lake, and chills and pains began to wrack his body. One morning he could not get out of his sleeping bag, but just lay there groaning. His fever got rapidly worse, and a parching thirst burned at his throat. In his delirium he began to talk out loud: "Here I am all alone, away out here in the woods. I am surely going to die. There is no one even to bring me a drink of water."

But the tortoise, all this time, had not been sleeping so soundly as the man had thought. In fact, she had been slyly watching him as he worked about the camp. When the hunter did not get up that morning, the tortoise understood that something was wrong, and also that it was water he kept calling for.

"This man," thought the tortoise, "did not eat me that day, though he had me in his power and was hungry. Instead, he took care of me till I was well. A good tortoise ought surely to do as much for him!"

The big turtle--she stood as high as a chair and weighed, as I said, as much as a man--crawled off to the lakeside. There she hunted around till she found a small tortoise shell. She polished it with sand till it was bright and shiny. Then she filled it with pure cold water from a spring, crawled back to camp with it, and gave the man a drink.

"Now for something to eat," said the turtle.

Turtles know the most peculiar kinds of roots and grasses to eat when they are sick. This tortoise went out and gathered a supply of such herbs and fed them to the man; and he ate them without noticing who was finding his food for him, so nearly unconscious was he in his delirium. So day after day the tortoise went hunting and hunting over the mountain sides, looking for tenderer and tenderer grasses with stronger and stronger juices. And how sorry she was she could not climb trees where such fine berries and fruits were hanging!

Thus the hunter lay for a week or more, struggling between life and death and kept alive only by the herbs the tortoise brought him. And then one day, to the joy of the faithful animal, the man sat up in his sleeping bag. The fever had left him and his mind was clear. He looked around in surprise to see the water and a bundle of grasses near him; for he was quite alone, save for the big turtle that still seemed to be sleeping in her corner.

"Alas, I am lost!" he moaned. "No one will ever come to me. The fever will return, and I cannot get any medicine nearer than Buenos Aires. If I could walk, I might get there; but I can't, so I must die!"

And, just as he feared, the fever did return that evening worse than before; and the man fell back into unconsciousness.

But again the turtle had understood: "Yes, he will die, if he stays here! I must get him to Buenos Aires where there is some medicine!"

Carefully she dragged the bundle of skins up to the man and placed it in position on his body. Then she did the same with the gourd full of snakes. And what a task it was to get the gun in place on top of the whole pile! Finally she went out into the woods and bit off a number of tough, strong vines. These she stretched across the sleeping man and tied to his arms and legs in such a way as to keep the baggage from falling off. She dug her way under the sleeping bag till everything was balanced on her back; and then she started off toward Buenos Aires.

She crawled along for ten or twelve hours each day, swimming rivers and ponds, sinking deep into the mud of bogs, climbing hills and crossing sandy plains where the sun at midday scorched terribly. In his fever the man kept calling for water; and it was very trying to the poor tortoise to have to get the man off her back each time while she went looking for a drink for him. But she struggled forward just the same, and each night she knew she was that much nearer to Buenos Aires.

But the tortoise, after days and days of this toil, understood that her own strength was giving out. She did not complain, but she began to be afraid that she would die before getting the hunter to a place of safety. And one morning, in fact, she was so tired she was quite unable to move.

"Here I am dying all alone in the woods!" the man moaned from his bag. "No one will help me get to Buenos Aires! Oh, oh, I shall die here all alone!"

You see, the man had been unconscious all the time, and thought he was still lying in the shelter, away back in the mountains.

The words stirred the weary tortoise to fresh effort. She got the man up on her back again and went on.

But the moment came when she could not take another step forward. She had not been eating for some days, because she had not dared take the time for hunting. Now she was too weak to do even that. So she drew her legs into her shell and closed her eyes, waiting for death to come, and mourning inside her turtle-heart that she had failed in saving the life of the man who had befriended her.

The sun went down and night fell. As the turtle chanced to open her eyes, she was surprised to see a reddish glow on the distant horizon; and she heard a voice--the voice of a wharf rat--talking near by. The rat was saying:

"My, what a turtle, what a turtle! I never saw such a big one in my life! And what is that on her back? A cord of wood?"

The poor turtle did not know that those lights came from Buenos Aires, and that the rat was a citizen of that town, out for a night's foraging in the fields of the suburbs.

"It is not a cord of wood," the turtle murmured, "It is a man, a sick man!"

"And what on earth are you doing here with a man on your back?" the rat inquired, laughing the way rats from the city laugh at their country cousins.