XII
STRANGE FRIENDS IN TIME OF NEED
THERE was once an old woman, a widow, in very straitened circumstances. She maintained herself by husking rice for other people, and getting particles of khúd[1] as reward. But poor as she was, she was not free from being molested by a thief. Frequently he visited her house and purloined the commonest things he could get, until at length the poor woman determined to seek the protection of the king of her country. With this purpose she was on her way to the palace, when a lump of clay, seeing her approach, said, "Where are you off to, old woman?" She replied that she was going to the king to ask for a guard to protect her from a certain thief. The lump of clay said, "Take me to your house, and leave me at the threshold. I will be your guard."
The woman did as she was told, but she once again set out towards the palace, not fully depending on the assurances of the lump of clay. On the road she found an open razor. It asked her the same question as the mass of clay had done, and, according to the instructions of the razor, the woman placed it close to her first sentinel, in the passage leading into her room. Still, however, doubting the efficiency of her two self-constituted guards, she again resumed her journey. A third time she found a friend on the way, a shingi fish, noted for the sharp appendages below its head, and it advised her to put it on the steps leading into her room, in a hándi[2] full of water. When she was returning home with this new recruit, she met a bomb and a frog, and desiring to add these to the number of her protectors, she carried them also to her house, and according to their instructions, placed the bomb by the side of her oven, in which the fire had not yet been extinguished, and the frog beside her bed.
All her fears now vanished, and with a sense of security she ate her sorry meal, sought her bed and fell asleep. The thief, not knowing the preparations against him, made an attempt to enter the woman's house, and trod on the lump of clay at the threshold. Not knowing what it might be that he had trodden on, he hastened to wipe it off on a patch of grass close by; and immediately the sharp razor inflicted a deep incision on his foot. The wound bled severely, and beside himself with pain, the thief hurried to the hándi near by, and plunged his foot into the water it contained. The shingi fish was at once on the alert, and pierced the wound with the spikes below its head, causing the wound to throb so painfully that the thief, to relieve it, placed his foot near the oven to warm it at the fire. This caused the bomb to roll into the fire and burst with a loud explosion. Several parts of the thief's body were badly burnt, and the thief in great pain ran from one end of the room to the other. The report awoke the woman, and she heard the frog saying, "O burhi otna chorer náchan dákhna."[3]
The thief was obliged to lie down for hours, quite helpless. The old woman, being of a kindly disposition, carefully tended his wound, thus heaping coals of fire on his head. So much was he affected by this that henceforth he became an honest man, and out of his small earnings fed and clothed the old woman till the end of her life. A report of this strange occurrence at her house was in time carried to the ears of the king, and not only did he bestow a pension upon her, but he also rewarded her helpers in the fittest way possible. The lump of clay had a shrub of roses planted on it, the razor every morning was used to shave the royal chin, the fish and the frog sported in a cistern in the palace, and, as the bomb had suffered martyrdom in the old woman's service, its remains were enshrined with honour.