hat all the heavens for a short time seemed
burning. Then the Moon drew over him his cloudy cloak, and the little
children of the Moon seemed to get drowsy, for they twinkled dimly, and
then a darkness fell over all the earth, and in the darkness man and
beast retired, each to his own place, according as the Moon had
directed.

A second time Bateta waked from sleep, and walked out to wonder at the
intense brightness of the burning light that made the day. Then he
looked around him, and his eyes rested upon a noble flock of goats and
sheep, all of whom bleated their morning welcome, while the younglings
pranced about in delight, and after curvetting around, expressed in
little bleats the joy they felt at seeing their chief, Bateta. His
attention was also called to the domestic fowls; there were red and
white and spotted cocks, and as many coloured hens, each with its own
brood of chicks. The hens trotted up to their master--cluck, cluck,
clucking--the tiny chicks, following each its own mother--cheep, cheep,
cheeping--while the cocks threw out their breasts and strutted grandly
behind, and crowed with their trumpet throats, "All hail, master."

Then the morning wind rose and swayed the trees, plants, and grasses,
and their tops bending before it bowed their salutes to the new king of
the earth, and thus it was that man knew that his reign over all was
acknowledged.

A few months afterwards, another double birth occurred, and a few months
later there was still another, and Bateta remembered the number of
months that intervened between each event, and knew that it would be a
regular custom for all time. At the end of the eighteenth year, he
permitted his first-born to choose a wife, and when his other children
grew up he likewise allowed them to select their wives. At the end of
ninety years, Hanna had born to Bateta two hundred and forty-two
children, and there were grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and
countless great-great-grandchildren, and they lived to an age many times
the length of the greatest age amongst us now-a-days. When they were so
old that it became a trouble to them to live, the Moon came down to the
earth as he had promised, and bore them to himself, and soon after the
first-born twins died and were buried in the earth, and after that the
deaths were many and more frequent. People ceased to live as long as
their parents had done, for sickness, dissensions, wars, famines,
accidents ended t