Waiting till its huge jaws were open I thrust my arm between them, grasping the short sword in such fashion that the hilt rested on its tongue and the point against the roof of its mouth.  It tried to close its jaws and lo! the good iron was fixed between them, holding them wide open.  Then I withdrew my hand and floated upwards with nothing worse than a cut upon the wrist from one of its sharp fangs.  I appeared upon the surface and after me the crocodile spouting blood and wallowing in its death agonies.  I remembered no more till I found myself lying on the bank surrounded by a multitude with Bes standing over me.  Also in the shallow water was the crocodile dead, my sword still fixed between its jaws.

“Are you harmed, Master” cried Bes in a voice of agony.

“Very little I think,” I answered, sitting up with the blood pouring from my arm.

Bes thrust aside Karema who had come lightly clothed from her tent, saying,

“All is well, Wife.  I will bring you the lilies presently.”

Then he flung his arms about me, kissed my hands and my brow and turning to the crowd, shouted,

“Last night you were disputing as to whether this Egyptian lord should be allowed to dwell with me in the land of Ethiopia.  Which of you disputes it now?”

“No one!” they answered with a roar.  “He is not a man but a god.  No man could have done such a deed.”

“So it seems,” answered Bes quietly.  “At least none of you even tried to do it.  Yet he is not a god but only that kind of man who is called a hero.  Also he is my brother, and while I reign in Ethiopia either he shall reign at my side, or I go away with him.”

“It shall be so, Karoon!” they shouted with one voice.  And after this I was carried back to the tent.

In front of it my mother waited and kissed me proudly before them all, whereat they shouted again.

So ended this adventure of the crocodile, except that presently Bes went back and recovered the two lilies for Karema, this time from a boat, which caused the Ethiopians to call out that he must love her very much, though not as much as he did me.

That afternoon, borne in litters, we set out for the City of the Grasshopper, which we reached on the fourth day.  As we drew near the place regiments of men to the number of twelve thousand or more, came out to meet us, so that at last we arrived escorted by an army who sang their songs of triumph and played upon their musical instruments until my head ached with the noise.

This city was a great place whereof the houses were built of mud and thatched with reeds.  It stood upon a wide plain and in its centre rose a natural, rocky hill upon the crest of which, fashioned of blocks of gleaming marble and roofed with a metal that shone as gold, was the temple of the Grasshopper, a columned building very like to those of Egypt.  Round it also were other public buildings, among them the palace of the Karoon, the whole being surrounded by triple marble walls as a protection from attack by foes.  Never had I seen anything so beautiful as that hill with its edifices of shining white roofed with gold or copper and gleaming in the sun.