E-Book, Englisch, Band 173, 45 Seiten
Reihe: 7 best short stories
Quiroga / Nemo 7 best short stories by Horacio Quiroga
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-3-98647-016-6
Verlag: Tacet Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, Band 173, 45 Seiten
Reihe: 7 best short stories
ISBN: 978-3-98647-016-6
Verlag: Tacet Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Horacio Silvestre Quiroga Forteza (31 December 1878 19 February 1937) was a Uruguayan playwright, poet, and short story writer.
Autoren/Hrsg.
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How The Rays Defended The Ford
In South America there is a river called the Yabebirì; and it flows through the city of Misiones. In this river there are many rays, a kind of mud fish like the salt-water skate; and the river, indeed, gets its name from them: “Yabebirì” means the “river of ray fish.” The ray is a wide, flat fish with a long, slender tail. The tail is very bony; and when it strikes you it cuts, and leaves poison in the wound.
There are so many rays in the river that it is dangerous even to put your foot into the water. I once knew a man who had his heel pricked by a ray. He had to walk more than two miles home, groaning with pain all the way and fainting several times from the poison. The pain from a ray bite is one of the sharpest pains one can feel.
But there are also other kinds of fish in the Yabebirì; and most of them are good to eat. That is why some evil men once began to fish for them with dynamite. They put the dynamite under water and set it off. The shock of the explosion stunned and killed all the fish nearby; and not only the big fish, but also the little ones, which cannot be eaten. It is very cruel and wasteful to hunt fish with dynamite.
However, there was a man who lived on the bank of the river; and he was sorry for the poor fish, especially the little ones; and he told the bad men that they must stop bombing the fish. At first they were angry and said they would do what they liked. But the man was known everywhere to be an upright, honest man, and finally they obeyed him and set off no more bombs in the river.
And the fish were grateful to this man, whom they had come to know the moment he approached the edge of the water. Whenever he walked along the bank smoking his pipe, the rays especially would swim along the bottom to keep him company. He, of course, did not know he had so many friends in the river. He lived there just because he liked the place.
Now, it happened one afternoon that a fox came running down to the river; and putting his forepaws into the water he called:
“Hey there, you ray fish! Quick! Quick! Here comes that friend of yours! He’s in trouble!”
All the rays who heard came swimming up anxiously to the edge of the water.
“What’s the matter? Where is he?” they asked.
“Here he comes!” answered the fox. “He has been fighting with a panther, and is trying to get away! He wants to get over to that island! Let him cross, for he is a very good man!”
“Of course we will! Of course we will!” the rays answered. “As for the panther, we will fix him!”
“Yes, but remember a panther is a panther!” said the fox; by which he meant that a panther is almost as hard to fight with as a tiger. And the fox gave a little jump and ran back into the woods, so as not to be near when the panther came.
A second or two later, the branches along the river bank were pushed aside, and the man came running down to the water’s edge. He was all bleeding and his shirt was torn. From a scratch on his face the blood was streaming down off his chin, and his sleeves were wet with blood also. It was clear that the man was very badly hurt; for he almost fell as he ran out into the river. When he put his feet into the water, the rays moved aside so that their tails would not touch him; and he waded across to the island, with the water coming up to his breast. On the other side he fell to the ground fainting from loss of blood.
The rays did not have much time to sit there pitying him. Some distance behind the man the panther came jumping along with great leaps to catch him. The big wildcat stopped on the bank, and gave a great roar; but up and down the river the rays went calling; “The Panther! The Panther!” and they gathered together near the shore to attack him if he tried to cross.
The panther looked up and down the stream, and finally he spied the man lying helpless on the island. He, too, was badly wounded and dripping with blood; but he was determined to eat the man at any cost. With another great howl, he leaped into the water.
Almost instantly, however, he felt as though a hundred pins and needles were sticking into his paws. You see, the rays were trying to block the ford, and were stinging him with the stingers in their tails. He gave one big jump back to the river bank and stood there roaring, and holding one paw up in the air because it hurt him to step on it. After a moment he looked down into the water and saw that it was all black and muddy. The rays were coming in great crowds and stirring up the bottom of the river.
“Ah hah!” said the panther: “Ah hah! I see! It is you, you bad, wicked ray fish! It was you who gave me all those stings! Well now, just get out of the way!”
“We will not get out of the way,” answered the rays.
“Away, I tell you!” said the panther.
“We won’t!” said the rays. “He is a good man. It is not right to kill him!”
“He gave me these wounds you see,” said the panther. “I must punish him!”
“And you gave him his wounds, too,” said the rays. “But that is all a matter for you folks in the woods to settle. So long as this man is on the river, he is in our province and we intend to protect him!”
“Get out of my way!” said the panther.
“Not never!” said the rays. You see, the rays had never been to school; and they said “not never” and “not nothing” the way children sometimes do and never ought to do, not never!
“Well, we’ll see!” said the panther, with another great roar; and he ran up the bank to get a start for one great jump. The panther understood that the rays were packed close in along the shore; and he figured that if he could jump away out into the stream he would get beyond them and their stingers, and finally reach the wounded man on the island.
But some of the rays saw what he was going to do, and they began to shout to one another:
“Out to mid-stream! Out to mid-stream! He’s going to jump! He’s going to jump!”
The panther did succeed in making a very long leap, and for some seconds after he struck the water he felt no pain. He gave a great roar of delight, thinking he had deceived his enemies. But then, all of a sudden, sting here and sting there, in front, in back, on his sides! The rays were upon him again, driving their poisonous stingers into his skin. For a moment, the panther thought it was as easy to go forward as back, and he kept on. But the rays were now all over along the island; so the panther turned and went back to the shore he had left.
He was now about done. He just had to lie down on his side to keep the bottoms of his feet off the ground; and his stomach went up and down as he breathed deeply from fatigue and pain. He was growing dizzy, also, because the poison from the stings was getting into his brain.
The rays were not satisfied, however. They kept crowding up along the shore because they knew that panthers never go alone, but always with a mate. This mate would come, and they would again have to defend the ford.
And so it was. Soon the she-panther came down roaring through the bushes to rescue her husband. She looked across to the island where the man was lying wounded; and then at her mate, who lay there panting at her feet; and then down into the water, which was black with rays.
“Ray fish!” she called.
“Well, madam?” answered the rays.
“Let me cross the river!”
“No crossing here for panthers!” said the rays.
“I’ll bite the tails off every one of you!” said the she-panther.
“Even without our tails, we won’t let you cross!” said the rays.
“For the last time, out of my way!” said the she-panther.
“Not never!” said the rays.
The she-panther now put one foot into the water; but a ray struck at her with its stinger, and made a sting right between two of her toes.
“Oooouch!” growled the she-panther.
“We have at least one tail left!” mocked the rays.
But the she-panther began to scowl now. When panthers are thinking very hard they scowl. This one scowled her face into deep wrinkles; which meant that she had a very important idea. She did not let on what it was, however. She just trotted off up the bank into the woods without saying another word.
But the rays understood what she was up to. She was going to some place farther along the stream where there were no rays and would swim across before they could reach her. And a great fright came over them. Rays cannot swim very fast, and they knew that the she-panther would get there before they did.
“Oh, oh!” they cried to each other. “Now our poor man-friend is done for. How can we let the rays down there know we must prevent the panther from crossing at any cost?”
But a little ray, who was a very bright and clever little fish, spoke up and said:
“Get the shiners1 to carry a message! Shiners can swim like lightning; and they too ought to be grateful to the man for stopping those bombs!”
“That’s it! That’s it! Let’s send the shiners!”
A school of shiners happened to be just going by; and the rays sent them off with a message to all the rays along the river:
“Sting the she-panther if she tries to cross! Hold the ford against the she-panther!”
Though the shiners swam very, very fast, they were barely in time. The panther was already in the water, and had begun to swim out beyond her depth. In fact, she was almost over on the other side toward the island. But when her paws struck bottom and she began to wade again, the rays were on hand. They rushed in packs upon her legs and feet, stinging...
