Note 20 — Chapter LXI

One day Chitránga was behind time, and Laghupátin flew to the top of a tree to look for him, and surveyed the whole wood. And he saw Chitránga on the bank of the river, entangled in the fatal noose, and then he came down and told this to the mouse and the tortoise. Then they deliberated together, and Laghupátin took up the mouse in his beak, and carried him to Chitránga. And the mouse Hiraṇya comforted the deer, who was distressed at being caught, and in a moment set him at liberty by gnawing his bonds asunder.20 In the meanwhile the tortoise Manthara, who was devoted to his friends, came up the bank near them, having travelled along the bed of the river. At that very moment the hunter, who had set the noose, arrived from somewhere or other, and when the deer and the others escaped, caught and made prize of the tortoise. And he put it in a net, and went off, grieved at having lost the deer. In the meanwhile the friends saw what had taken place, and by the advice of the far-seeing mouse, the deer went a considerable distance off, and fell down as if he were dead.21 And the crow stood upon his head, and pretended to peck his eyes. When the hunter saw that, he imagined that he had captured the deer, as it was dead, and he began to make for it, after putting down the tortoise on the bank of the river. When the mouse saw him making towards the deer, he came up, and gnawed a hole in the net which held the tortoise, so the tortoise was set at liberty, and he plunged into the river. And when the deer saw the hunter coming near, without the tortoise, he got up, and ran off, and the crow, for his part, flew up a tree. Then the hunter came back, and finding that the tortoise had escaped by the net’s having been gnawed asunder, he returned home, lamenting that the tortoise had fled and could not be recovered.