Then the Tiger recited one:--

"No hawk, no tiger lord of beasts, not Indra can command
A kindred host that tiger-like combine to make a stand."

Thereat the sham ascetic, to egg him on, recited two stanzas:--

"The little tiny feathered fowl in flocks and coveys fly,
In heaps together up they rise, together skim the sky.

"Down stoops the hawk, and all alone, down on them as they play,
Harries and kills them at his will: that is your tiger's way."

[348] This said, he further encouraged him: "Royal Tiger, you know not your own power. One roar only, and a spring--there will not be two of them left together, I dare swear!" The Tiger did so.

To explain this, the Master said a stanza:--

"Then he with cruel greedy eye, deeming these words were true,
Took heart, and with his fangs all bare leaped on the tusked crew."

Well, the Tiger went back and stood there awhile on the hill. The Boars told Carpenter's Boar that he was come again. "Fear not," said he, comforting them, and then took his stand upon the ridge between the two pits. The Tiger with all speed sprang towards the Boar, but the Boar rolled tail over snout in the first hole. The Tiger could not check his onset, and fell all of a heap into the pit shaped like to a winnowing fan. Up jumped the Boar in a trice, buried his tusks in the Tiger's thigh, pierced him to the heart, devoured the flesh, bit at him, bundled him over into the further pit, crying, "There, take the varlet!" [349] They who came first got one chance apiece of nozzling a mouthful, those who came later went about asking, "How does tiger's-meat taste?"

Carpenter's Boar came out of the pit, and, looking round upon the others, said, "Well, don't you like it?" But they answered, "My lord, you have done for the Tiger, and that's one; but there is another left worse than ten tigers." "Who is that, pray?" "A sham ascetic, who eats the meat which the Tiger brings him from time to time." "Come along then, and we will catch him." So they quickly sprang off together.