"
This enraged the Alligator extremely; it made him quite cross to think
of being so often deceived by a little Jackal, and he said to himself,
"I will be taken in no more. Next time I will be very cunning." So
for a long time he waited and waited for the Jackal to return to the
riverside; but the Jackal did not come, for he had thought to himself:
"If matters go on in this way, I shall some day be caught and eaten by
the wicked old Alligator. I had better content myself with living
on wild figs," and he went no more near the river, but stayed in the
jungles and ate wild figs, and roots which he dug up with his paws.
When the Alligator found this out, he determined to try and catch the
Jackal on land; so, going under the largest of the wild fig-trees,
where the ground was covered with the fallen fruit, he collected a
quantity of it together, and, burying himself under the great heap,
waited for the Jackal to appear. But no sooner did the cunning little
animal see this great heap of wild figs all collected together than
he thought, "That looks very like my friend the Alligator." And to
discover if it were so or not, he called out: "The juicy little wild
figs I love to eat always tumble down from the tree, and roll here and
there as the wind drives them; but this great heap of figs is quite
still; these cannot be good figs; I will not eat any of them.
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