spear handle, that lioness may return."

"Yes," I said; "let us go and report to the King of kings that we have
killed a lion."

"Master, it is not enough. Even common kings believe little that they
do not see, wherefore it is certain that a King of kings will believe
nothing and still more certain that he will not come here to look. So
as we cannot carry the lion, we must take a bit of it," and
straightway he cut off the end of the brute's tail.

Following the crocodile path, presently we reached the edge of the
reeds opposite to the camp where the King now sat in state beneath a
purple pavilion that had been reared, eating a meal, with his
courtiers standing at a distance and looking very hungry.

Out of the reeds bounded Bes, naked and bloody, waving the lion's tail
and singing some wild Ethiopian chant, while I, also bloody and half
naked, for the lion's claws had torn my jerkin off me, followed with
bow unstrung.

The King looked up and saw us.

"What! Do you live, Egyptian?" he asked. "Of a surety I thought that
by now you would be dead."

"It was the lion that died, O King," I answered, pointing to Bes who,
having ceased from his song, was jumping about carrying the beast's
tail in his mouth as a dog carries a bone.