Note 8 — Chapter LX

Then a certain makara dwelling in that lake, seeing him carrying off fish, said:—“Whither are you taking the fish?” Then that crane said to him exactly what he had said to the fish. The makara,8 being terrified, said—“Take me there too.” The crane’s intellect was blinded with the smell of his flesh, so he took him up, and soaring aloft carried him towards the slab of rock. But when the makara got near the rock, he saw the fragments of the bones of the fish that the crane had eaten, and he perceived that the crane was in the habit of devouring those who reposed confidence in him. So no sooner was the sagacious makara put down on the rock, than with complete presence of mind he cut off the head of the crane. And he returned and told the occurrence, exactly as it happened, to the other fish, and they were delighted, and hailed him as their deliverer from death.