How the Whale Became Read Online Free Page B

he replied. ‘You wait. Watch me and wait. You’re in for a surprise. I’ll be a leopard yet.’
    One morning he awoke to find his skin covered with big spots, almost like a leopard’s.
    ‘Joy! Joy!’ he cried, and danced about till he was sodden with dew. He ran off to show himself to the wild-dogs. When they saw his spots they all fled, looking back over their shoulders fearfully.
    ‘Ha ha!’ cried Hyena. ‘So you thought I was Leopard, did you?’
    It was a long time before he could persuade them that he really was Hyena. Even so, they never quite trusted him again.
    They began to move away quietly whenever they saw him coming.
    As for Hyena, he returned to his Leopard- Becoming with a renewed zest.
    *
    This went on for many years.
    At last, Hyena began to feel impatient.
    ‘Shall I never be a leopard?’ he asked himself. ‘I’m still not anywhere near as good as Leopard-Becomer. In fact, he picks up new tricks faster than I learn his old ones.’
    He ran to the Wild-Dog-Becomers.
    ‘Am I Leopard yet?’ he asked.
    They peeped back over the skyline behind which they had run at the first sight of him.
    ‘You are not,’ they said. ‘But you are not Wild-Dog either, not any more. The Lord knows what sort of a thing you are now.’
    Hyena went back to Leopard. For some years he went about in a very disgruntled condition, but still following Leopard. One day he came as close to Leopard as he dared and said:
    ‘Shall I never become a leopard, Leopard?’
    Leopard looked at him in disgust.
    ‘You,’ he said, ‘have already become what you are going to become.’
    ‘And what is that, please?’ asked Hyena politely.
    ‘You have become,’ said Leopard, ‘a Leopard-Follower .’
    Hyena retired to a safe distance and thought about this. He became very embittered.
    ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘If I cannot ever be a leopard, that’s finished it. I shall go back to being a wild-dog. Leopard is a stupid creature anyway, calling me a Leopard-Follower.’
    And he ran back to the wild-dogs. He knew they would run away when they caught sight of him, so while he was still in the distance he began to shout:
    ‘It’s me, Hyena. I’m coming back to be one of you. I’ve finished with Leopard.’
    But it was no use. The wild-dogs ran, and faster than Hyena they ran. He chased them as far as he could move, shouting till his throat ached. At last he stood alone, panting, in the middle of a flat, empty, silent plain.
    Sadly, he drooped his tail and turned back. He was feeling hungry. Then he remembered that hedidn’t know how to kill anything. He walked on and on, getting hungrier and hungrier.
    Suddenly he stopped, and sniffed. A leopard had killed a gazelle near there a week ago. He found the bones, cracked them, and sucked them. Then, sniffing, he followed the track of the leopard.
    This leopard lived under a rock on top of a hill. Hyena made his bed at the bottom of the hill. Whenever Leopard went out hunting Hyena followed him and ate what he left. In this way he lived.
    But he was deeply ashamed. He now saw that he was nothing but a Leopard-Follower after all. He became more bitter than ever. He no longer imitated Leopard. His greatest pleasure now was to sit at a safe distance, when Leopard was eating, and make critical remarks in a loud clear voice:
    ‘What a stupid animal you are! How gluttonously you eat! How boorishly you tear the meat! How disgustingly you growl as you chew!’
    And between each comment he gave a laugh, a loud mocking laugh, so that all the other animals within hearing would think he was getting the better of Leopard in some way.
    ‘If I cannot be a leopard,’ he said to himself, ‘then you shall be ashamed of being a leopard.’
    Leopard, of course, was much too fine a beast ever to be ashamed of being what he was.
    *
    That was as far as Hyena ever got. He is the same still. He follows Leopard from meal to meal, and laughs and laughs, while Leopard gorges himself on the choicest